Related

“The nonviolent strategy has been to dramatize the evils of our society in such a way that pressure is brought to bear against those evils by the forces of good will in the community and change is produced.”
MLK jr

Anonymous

January 8, 2011 at 10:23 pm

Rose says you must also blame, “KOS, and Soros the hatemonger and his many sewer outlets, including Media Matters”

The Tea Party has embraced the politics and promotion of Palin. Will they distance themselves now? Good luck.

robash141

January 8, 2011 at 10:50 pm

My money would be on Glen Beck rather than Sara Palin as the shooter’s main source of political inspiration.
The guy was obviously a lunatic but his you tubes had a bunch of charts and number puzzles And he digressed about how America needed to go back on the gold standard. Gee, who does that sound like?

anonymous

January 8, 2011 at 10:54 pm

Yeah, don’t forget Palin’s buddy Sharron Angle. This was not just a website. She said people will soon take up 2nd Amendment Remedies.

i think blaming this on the tea party is pretty stupid in all honesty. the tea party being vitriolic led to the shooting? everything in our effed up society is vitriolic from tv to movies to magazines to radio to stand up comedy to hallways at schools to playgrounds to ballparks and on and on. our whole society is sick and mean and neurotic as hell. the fact that more people don’t lose it travis bickle style and go on shooting rampages is the real shocker. all i know is the guaranteed result of this tragedy will be less freedom for us and greater militarism of the government; you can take that to the bank.

treesnstuff

January 8, 2011 at 11:35 pm

@robash: what’s wrong with discussing the prospect of returning to the gold standard? what, we all have to bow down to a fiat currency because the federal reserve told us to? why can’t there be a debate? from the looks of things, we definitely should be having a debate about our nation’s economy and financial system because our currency is losing value, the rich/poor gap is wider than the grand canyon, and a massive currency devaluation looks to be growing closer. i, for one, and more than ready to debate all sorts of ideas including the gold standard. does supporting a gold standard make you evil or a terrorist? have an open mind homeboy.

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 1:07 am

This discussion isn’t about the gold standard you fucking dimtwit!!
Of course you’d like to change the subject.

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 4:46 am

That’s a pretty big leap to blame Sara Palin for yesterdays act of domestic terrorism. Maybe you should blame the Army too for not allowing this deranged young man in.

DaveD., Heraldo, and Robash141 are the clowns on this one. But of course This post will be deleted as it doesn’t conform with the views of Heraldo

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 4:48 am

Inflamitory swine !

How can you post this drivel with a straight face?

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 5:35 am

4:46,

(If Heraldo deletes the 4:46 comment, it called those who would blame Sarah Palin for yesterday’s violence “clowns,” adding it’s a “pretty big leap.”)

Yeah. Pretty big leap. It’s not as though the Representative might have expressed specific concern about Sarah Palin’s efforts leading to this sort of violence.

Oh, wait, she did.

Right here. Skip to 2 minutes in if you have problems with attention span.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 5:46 am

But as was commented above, it’s not just Palin. Here’s an extract from the AP, describing a campaign event put on by the thug who ran for Gifford’s seat:

“During his campaign effort to unseat Giffords in November, Republican challenger Jesse Kelly held fundraisers where he urged supporters to help remove Giffords from office by joining him to shoot a fully loaded M-16 rifle. Kelly is a former Marine who served in Iraq and was pictured on his website in military gear holding his automatic weapon and promoting the event.”

And, of course, the thug’s spokesman sees no connection at all.

“I don’t see the connection,” between the fundraisers featuring weapons and Saturday’s shooting, said John Ellinwood, Kelly’s spokesman. “I don’t know this person, we cannot find any records that he was associated with the campaign in any way. I just don’t see the connection.”

Walt

January 9, 2011 at 5:52 am

It does make you wonder why people bother running for office. Is it really worth the hate. . .or your life?

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 6:01 am

I would guess, Walt, that people like Giffords run for office because they don’t want people like Palin and Kelly running things, and they realize that most of us cannot or will not get involved to the extent of running for office.

The rest of us can be grateful that some good people are still willing to run in order to keep the thugs from taking over elected offices completely, the way they seem to have taken over much of society.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 6:04 am

And while I’m here, let me just ask those who don’t understand why gay people might be upset to have local promoters and Taverns supporting musicians who call for the murder of gay people: DO YOU GET IT NOW?

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 6:19 am

The Humboldt Herald has been reduced to nothing more than HATE SPEECH and you all look like fools if you agree with Heraldo.

This shooter was a 22 year old kook and off his rocker. You fools don’t even know what his politics were except for some paranoid delusions about government power. In that he sounds just like a lot of you. In fact, most of you are now sounding like card carrying members of the lunatic fringe.

Walt

January 9, 2011 at 7:05 am

Tim McVeigh, bin Laden, Loughner, all these folks are cut from the same cloth. The politics are unimportant. . .what IS important is stirring them up enough to go out and kill people. Fox News (and its left-wing counterparts) make money from stirring people up, and some of the folks they stir up are going to kill people. Yes, Mitch, the same is true for stirring up people to kill gays: somebody makes money preaching hate and others die. Pope Urban II did the same thing in 1095 and started the crusades. Deus vult!

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 7:07 am

6:19,

On the slight chance that you are just too stupid to understand, we all know that the shooter was “a 22 year old kook and off his rocker.”

When people with national platforms start posting pictures with gun sights, and when candidates for federal office start inviting people to come shoot an M16 for victory, they are stirring a pot that is just filled with kooks waiting to be set off.

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 7:13 am

I don’t think this has anything to do with Sarah Palin and her use of the target metaphor. This is about an unstable human being. My thoughts are with these 6 people who died and all of those who are fighting for their lives. I hope Giffords can recover fully from this awful trauma.

“Sometimes religion was brought up, or drugs. He smoked pot, I don’t know how regularly. And he wasn’t too keen on religion, from what I could tell.”

hmmmm….pot? no, that is the harmless drug.

Decline to State

January 9, 2011 at 7:38 am

Imagine my surprise to wake up this morning and find I’m living in Pakistan…or maybe it’s Sri Lanka!

I can only hope the outrage is so complete over this heinous act that it snaps us to our senses.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 7:38 am

When someone screams “FIRE” in a crowded theater, who is to blame for the people trampled, the one who yelled or the frightened people’s feet? Using inflammatory rhetoric and violent imagery as political tools to incite your supporters’ fear is the same as yelling fire. When you convince people that their country is in danger from their elected officials, call for 2nd amendment cures and watering the tree of liberty with blood, you are essentially yelling fire and you are to blame for their subsequent actions.

Ponder z

January 9, 2011 at 7:39 am

HH and kooks who are anti Palin and Tea Party are making a big stretch of this. They drink up the slop form MSNBC. It is truly laughable. Like saying Obama is in the black panthers because he is BLACK!

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 7:50 am

I am not a Sara Palin fan (the opposite!) but this has nothing to do with her.

Random Guy

January 9, 2011 at 7:55 am

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party…it’s like grown adults talking about the band KISS as though they were genuine sorcerers of satanic influence with real magical powers. Politics like this exist to brainwash you, part one complete: you humor their existence as legitimate and are successfully distracted by them. Why? Really…WHY A BLOG POST ABOUT HER???? Outsmarted by propaganda…

Straight up

January 9, 2011 at 8:19 am

That Sheriff really nailed it. He told it like it is.

Farrell Broughton

January 9, 2011 at 8:23 am

People who don’t have the conviction in their opinions to use their names and choose to hide behind a pseudonym are cowards. My opinion is not exclusive to this topic. To suggest there is no connection to illustrations of congresspersons in cross hairs and this shooter being influenced by it and/or the republican who ran for her office encouraging people to bring guns to campaign/speech locations and shooting off his m-16 is naive. The political climate of hate and a “call to arms” in that area, driven by ads like Palin’s, made an incident as horrific as this to be just a matter of time.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 8:29 am

While I agree with your post, Farrell, GFY on you opinion of why people use pseudonyms. Some people have very good reasons to remain anonymous. Most people aren’t willing to make themselves targets for harassment, personal or professional, as the price for voicing their opinions. As Oscar Wilde said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Random Guy

January 9, 2011 at 8:29 am

Sure, ferrel braughtwhatever. Let’s censor ourselves. I’d be happy if airforce one went down with the entire whitehouse staff, congress AND the senate on board. And a big fuck you for not respecting anonymity on the internet. I’d lose my job in a heartbeat if not allowed to express myself anonymously. MORAN.

Actually it is more likely the encouragement of hate speech against female politicians LIKE Palin that led to this. Have you missed it?

This guy was a lunatic. And his high school friends are saying he was QUITE LEFTY – some of his favorite books were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. But in fact, other than his lunatic rantings against currency (has he been talking to David Cobb?) the guy is really not political –
“Last year, Loughner was photographed smiling while working as a volunteer at the Tucson Festival of Books. His own list of favorite reading seemed to be heavy on childhood fables – The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver’s Travels, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, to name a few – but also politically themed fiction including George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Ayn Rand’s We the Living. So far as political non-fiction was concerned, Loughner’s favorites included Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto.
Ask yourself: What’s missing from that list? And the telling answer is: History, biography, political science, economics, current events — the kind of books that someone who is really into politics would read. ”Flag-Burning, Anti-Religious, Marx Supporter Kills Bush-Appointed Judge… The Left Blames Tea Party & Sarah Palin
Shame on you heraldo.

A 22 year old associated as a Tea Partier, Palin listener, etc… to mock in this way is ugly disgusting and shows deceit by the part of several non-human beings above. Just goes to show the lack of integrities by so many citizens in this country.

Ummm, sorry folks, but this guy is too young to have any real clue. He obviously was a crackpot whackjob who lost his composure and let those little demons in his head go off.

Now, for the deceiving and manipulating whiners of this event – It was foreseen by many, INCLUDING, dare I say, non-Tea Partiers.

The sad part is that people outside the decision makings of politics were affected too – this is fact.

Now, colleagues ALWAYS seem to have nice words to say in an event like this, but remember, those nice words NEVER REFLECT the actual abuses that go unnoticed and unaware by the very same people with only nice things to say. There are secret, backdoor decisions or non-decisions, actions or non-actions that piss people off and they resort to violence. The problem I see thus far with this 22 year old is he is too green to life and did not understand that you can’t lose composure over stuff you can’t factually prove in documentation form from the hands of the very same people or subordinates that cause the issues that make a person lose composure.

As was stated yesterday, this congresswomen could be the most perfect human being, but she could have also made some really fascist decisions that helped to initiate this unfortunate reaction.

It really is too bad and too sad that elected officials have ruined the social atmosphere in this country because of their greeds for power, control and tax collections, not to mention popularities.

I still can’t get over the 9 year old, just elected school prez. or something, that has never voted in her life or had any bearing what so ever on the current state of affairs except that she was a bloodline to the parents who probably took tax subsidies that kinda made the 9 year old a part of what is fracked in this country subsidy social tax problem – but the 9 year old should never have been affected the way she was; rather, education and embarrassments prior to the rule of fair law is the way to coop social issues and punish the political frauds and criminals.

Mitch- I hope you don’t have any dire straights/knopfler in your music collection and call for them to not be allowed to play around here as well if you want to take it that far.oh wait I believe mark did play here and no one said shit,hippiecrytes

Farrell Broughton

January 9, 2011 at 8:48 am

Random guy, you solidify my point completely. You take verbal shots at me but would not have the strength or conviction to stand behind your hateful words. You would not say those things in person to me with such a ridiculous tone. I am sure you would conduct yourself respectfully while talking to me. Out of respect for yourself and respect for the repercussions of your hateful tone.
“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Giffords said at the time. “The way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there are consequences to that action.”

If defending your position means insulting my name and cussing at me perhaps you should grow up. I thought adults were in this discussion; not kids. P.s. is moran your name or are you also calling me a moron?

Anon2

January 9, 2011 at 8:50 am

Can the left stop ranting long enough to try & regain some decency ?

Rose made a good point. It is just as likely that all the over-the-line ranting against women candidates (like Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnel) that the left & the national media has engaged in these last two years had more to do with it than Palin’s web site.

Then, reading the story in the Chronicle, it appears that the shooter was very anti-religion & heavy into Pot.

tra

January 9, 2011 at 8:57 am

Fox News, of all places, says shooter may have been influenced by racist, anti-immigrant organization:

According to a memo obtained by Fox News with information compiled by the Department of Homeland Security and released to state law enforcement officials, Jared Loughner, the alleged shooter of Congressman Gabrielle Giffords, may have been influenced by a pro-white racist organization that publishes an anti-immigration newsletter.

No direct connection, but strong suspicion is being direceted at American Renaissance, an organization that Loughner mentioned in some of his internet postings and federal law enforcement officials are investigating Loughner’s possible links to the organization. The organization is a monthly publication that promotes a variety of white racial positions.

“The group’s ideology is anti government, anti immigration, anti ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti Semitic,” according to the memo which goes on to point out that Congressman Giffords is the first Jewish female elected to high office in Arizona. A recent posting on American Renaissance’s website on January 7 begins with an article entitled: “Exit poll: Whites are Different.” The site goes on to list anti-immigration articles. Investigators are also pursuing Loughner’s alleged anti-Semitism.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 9:04 am

Plain Jane says:
January 9, 2011 at 8:29 am
While I agree with your post, Farrell, GFY on you opinion of why people use pseudonyms. Some people have very good reasons to remain anonymous. Most people aren’t willing to make themselves targets for harassment, personal or professional, as the price for voicing their opinions. As Oscar Wilde said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Response: Sooooooooooo sincere, not; and, then there are people like PlainJane who have something or more to hide, go opposite of sincerity and trust and honor and ethics to give acronyms of hate and anger opposite of the such lovely paraphrasing of rational to make an appearance or showwomanship of being truthful was it?

Crud, duped again – Plain Jane hides and uses the willing position to attack from a unwilling position of understanding that those who are transparent are willing to be attacked – heck, give her a mask and she will attack while bamboozling those who know her as a friend, but don’t really know her as the enemy. It just depends on identification of the gender of PlainJane.

It could be that PJ is an assexual, bi-sexual or heterosexual GFY SHE, a GFY HE or a GFY GLBT or a GFY it. Or, maybe just merely a political, gang banging adult theme park consumer. There is a very good reason to play hide and seek like PJ does – it is called brainwashing while not allowing many folks to recognize the false human being PJ is while playing social head games.

Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 9:10 am

Rose needs to stop taking history lessons at Beck University. Nazis were not socialist after they completely purged the socialists from their party (See Night of the Long Knives and note the date). The socialists were dupes of the fascists who used them to gain power and then destroyed them, YEARS before they even deported a single Jew. Taking note of the nutcase’s very diverse (polar opposites) reading list which also included Ayn Rand (fits his libertarian rantings) and pretending they are all “leftist” is absurd. Whether or not this guy was a Palin / Beck fan is irrelevant. The violent rhetoric has to STOP.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 9:12 am

Anon2 says:
January 9, 2011 at 8:50 am
Can the left stop ranting long enough to try & regain some decency ?

Rose made a good point. It is just as likely that all the over-the-line ranting against women candidates (like Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnel) that the left & the national media has engaged in these last two years had more to do with it than Palin’s web site.

Then, reading the story in the Chronicle, it appears that the shooter was very anti-religion & heavy into Pot.

Response: Of course the media would play-out the anti-religion and the pot.

Why?

Since religion is evilminded and a man-made fraud, it is dwindling each and every successive generation -THIS IS FABULOUS – TOO BAD SO MANY GENEATIONS HAVE BEEN IMPOVERISHED DUE TO THESE FALSE BELIEFS IN GODS.

POT/MJ: PRO-RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE THE MAIN REASON WHY POT IS ILLEGAL AND STILL A SOCIAL TOOL USED BY POLITICANS TO CAUSE CHAOS AND SOCIAL DISORDERS.

FOR THOSE WHOSE EYES ARE WIDE SHUT, BUT WHOSE EARS LIKE TO BE INTERNALLY WASHED AND WAXED DAILY, please get a clue about life!

JL

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 9:14 am

I am sure he was just a plant in the the left/right wing conspiracy to nullify any opposition to the repeal of the unconstitutional law of enforcing health insurance on American citizens.

If we can just get everyone to do more drugs and commit more sodomy then everyone will become less violent. After all it you don’t have any rectal fortitude then your limp wrist will make it harder to hold up that heavy gun accurately and pull the trigger.

tra

January 9, 2011 at 9:17 am

The Henchman has a Hunch:

Now, colleagues ALWAYS seem to have nice words to say in an event like this, but remember, those nice words NEVER REFLECT the actual abuses that go unnoticed and unaware by the very same people with only nice things to say. There are secret, backdoor decisions or non-decisions, actions or non-actions that piss people off and they resort to violence. The problem I see thus far with this 22 year old is he is too green to life and did not understand that you can’t lose composure over stuff you can’t factually prove in documentation form from the hands of the very same people or subordinates that cause the issues that make a person lose composure.

As was stated yesterday, this congresswomen could be the most perfect human being, but she could have also made some really fascist decisions that helped to initiate this unfortunate reaction.

So, according to the Hunchman’s take on this, responsibility falls on Rep. Griffin herself, for doing something nefarious but unprovable, which then causes the shooter to “lose his composure.”

What a bizarre and twisted point of view.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 9:20 am

The various Anonymi here, and Rose, are completely correct.

The first reason that Giffords was shot is the shooter smoked POT, the devil weed.

The second reason is that she is FEMALE, and radical leftists (like Obama) hate women.

The third is that the shooter read NAZI/LEFTIST literature.

This hate speech against the tea party must stop, and we must all recognize the terrible oppression inflicted upon retired white people in Arizona.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 9:20 am

Bizarre and twisted minds think alike.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 9:22 am

9:14,

Sorry, I didn’t get to examine your comment before my reply.

The fourth reason is SODOMITES.

Random Guy

January 9, 2011 at 9:24 am

feral brontosaurus jr. III, you spend so much time staring at the internet that it’s interfering with your perception of reality. You have come to believe you can depict “tone” through text.

How many people in the US will be shot and killed today? How many homeless people will die prematurely today? How many have already this morning? Not because of fake politicians…because of real ones.

mresquan

January 9, 2011 at 9:24 am

Rose wrote,”Actually it is more likely the encouragement of hate speech against female politicians LIKE Palin that led to this. Have you missed it?”

So was Palin under some sort of mind control when she produced the site with the crosshairs showing where the Congresswoman’s district was?
And since the shooting,has the site been taken down?

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 9:36 am

And that female nut who lost in Nevada calling for “2nd amendment remedies” if they couldn’t win at the ballot box?

Walt

January 9, 2011 at 9:36 am

A little over 30 years ago, my stepmother, now a retired white lady living in Tucson, and my Dad were on vacation in Hawaii and one night had a long conversation with a very nice young man. . .named Mark David Chapman.

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 9:38 am

Interesting how Rose gives us a link where we we can Pray for The family of the Accused Gunman. When has Rose ever expressed concern about the family of an accused criminal?
It’s quite possible that they may have raised him to love guns and hate Jews and Democrats.
Maybe Jared didn’t listen to Glen Beck himself ,maybe he just listened to his old man ranting about what he heard on Glen Beck.

mresquan

January 9, 2011 at 9:39 am

One place where Rose would be correct was her writing that it probably started 8 years ago…..when George Bush II was in office continuing the Nazi tradition that his grandfather Prescott assisted in financing at the onset and during the holocaust.Where was the Tea Party when he was in office assisting the bankers and war profiteers in shredding our economy,and stripping away at civil rights?

FoxStudio

January 9, 2011 at 9:55 am

Exactly right, Heraldo.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 9:57 am

tra says:
January 9, 2011 at 9:17 am
The Henchman has a Hunch:

Now, colleagues ALWAYS seem to have nice words to say in an event like this, but remember, those nice words NEVER REFLECT the actual abuses that go unnoticed and unaware by the very same people with only nice things to say. There are secret, backdoor decisions or non-decisions, actions or non-actions that piss people off and they resort to violence. The problem I see thus far with this 22 year old is he is too green to life and did not understand that you can’t lose composure over stuff you can’t factually prove in documentation form from the hands of the very same people or subordinates that cause the issues that make a person lose composure.

As was stated yesterday, this congresswomen could be the most perfect human being, but she could have also made some really fascist decisions that helped to initiate this unfortunate reaction.

So, according to the Hunchman’s take on this, responsibility falls on Rep. Griffin herself, for doing something nefarious but unprovable, which then causes the shooter to “lose his composure.”

What a bizarre and twisted point of view.

Response: I could not agree more that the social atmosphere in this fracked country is bizarre, but it is reallity-fact as twisted as reality is……

JL

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 10:00 am

It seems more like an attempt damage control to me…Wouldn’t be at all surprised if the suspect’s parents turn out to be big time birther/oather/deather /truthers

I am in agreement with Farrell. In newspapers the editor decides if a person has a legitimate cause to be anonymous. Here it seems anonymity is just an excuse to lob insults without consequences. But most posters here know how I feel about it. I disagree with it; but I defend their right to do it.
The gloves are off in American politics. How anyone can give Fox, Beck and Palin a pass, when they blatantly call for assassination of foreign enemies such as Julian Assange, and some nut-job applies it to “domestic enemies”?
It is becoming clear there are choices to make as Americans. Do we become the Neo-Fascist imperialist, “New-American-Centurions” of Palin/Beck. Or so we try to live up to the American idealism of WWII, when we saw ourselves as defenders of the “underdog” and friend to oppressed people everywhere. Yes, I realize that we didn’t live up to that ideal, but it is a better thought than: “Kill everyone; make the world safe for Billionaires.”

Joel Mielke

January 9, 2011 at 10:02 am

“does supporting a gold standard make you evil or a terrorist?”

No, but it does indicate that you are a kook.

humboldturtle

January 9, 2011 at 10:07 am

Lies have consequences.

tra

January 9, 2011 at 10:07 am

Jeff, I just think it’s despicable that while Ms. Griffin is fighting for her life in a hospital bed, you would sit here speculating, without any evidence whatsoever, that she “could have also made some really fascist decisions that helped to initiate this unfortunate reaction.” You ought to be ashamed.

mresquan

January 9, 2011 at 10:08 am

“No, but it does indicate that you are a kook.”

I’d like to see the gold standard brought back,depending on only one form of currency exchange isn’t a good idea.But then again,I am a kook.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 10:08 am

Kill the boob tube (television) and see peace grow!

JL

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 10:13 am

tra,

I am not ashamed of harmful and intellectual thoughts in a form of speculation. Did I wish death upon her, NO! Did I wish her ill will, NO!

So, quit whining about the realm of possibilites. I doubt my telepathic communication powers are getting to her head as she lay in a hospital bed. No pain, no gain. It is sad that events like this make people get off their arses to actually THINK.

JL

TurnItDown

January 9, 2011 at 10:15 am

To not believe their is a connection between violent speech/symbolism and violent action is simply to deny history:

The news media played a crucial role in the Rwanda genocide; local print and radio media fueled the killings. The print media in Rwanda started hate speech against Tutsis, which was later continued by radio stations. According to commentators, anti-Tutsi hate speech “…became so systemic as to seem the norm.”

We should all be careful with our rhetoric.

humboldturtle

January 9, 2011 at 10:15 am

I saw my first pro-lying t-shirt at a track meet in McKinleyville back in ’95 — almost got ran over by a kid in a gorilla shirt that said “It Isn’t a Lie if You Don’t Get Caught”. That kid would be about the same age as this shooter. He’s a victim, too.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 10:19 am

What is life now when history proves speculation has concurrently existed along the evolutionary advances and declines of mankind and its history based on facts and truth, gee whiz.

JL

TurnItDown

January 9, 2011 at 10:28 am

Fortunately JL we don’t have to worry about the consequences of your rhetoric because it is largely incomprehensible.

skippy

January 9, 2011 at 10:37 am

It’s too soon to come to any firm conclusion what motivated this heinously tragic act. My thoughts and prayers go out to those senselessly hurt and killed.

The (alleged) shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, is a troubled fellow with little-to-no grasp of reality whatsoever. Having observed individuals with bi-polar conditions, anti-social and borderline behaviors, sociopathic, psychotic, and schizophrenic personalities of every color and flavor, to say this fellow is either to the rational ‘left’ or ‘right’ of anything is presumptuous– a tremendous leap of faith at best. Quite simply, he makes no sense; his brain seemingly scrambled.

I’ve viewed his 5 personal videos to have some sort of firsthand insight and observation beyond the news reports. With some trepidation they are here for the reader to make an informed opinion and judgment, perhaps adding to the discussion. Not wishing to give Mr. Loughner any credence, please be forewarned they are nonsensical, tedious, and bizarre; you may wish to disregard it altogether.

Well, as far as overheated rhetoric goes, there’s a wide variety to look at, ranging from merely steaming, to outright boiling over

For example, the use of the term “targetting” is as commonplace in politics as it is in marketing, and truth be told, I’m not all that concerned about the Sarah Palin map showing crosshairs on the “targetted” districts.

But Sharon Angle’s call for “Second Amendment solutions” seems like more of an unambiguous call for using violence when you can’t win at the ballot box.

tra

January 9, 2011 at 10:44 am

[FBI Director Robert] Mueller …said the investigation will focus in part on Loughner’s possible connections to white supremacist groups.

We disagree. The use of a rifle scope as a marking conveys a very different meaning than the use of something like a flag, donkey, elephant, or star.

To some people, it’s “cute.”

How would you feel if a national group drew a political map of the United States with rifle scope marks over, for example, Arcata and San Francisco, or perhaps Colorado Springs.

It’s complete irresponsibility. It would be excusable in a fourth grader, but I’d hope he or she would still get sent to the office.

Goldie

January 9, 2011 at 10:53 am

TurnitDown brings it home: We should all be careful with our rhetoric.
This is a tragedy. The young girl murdered was born on 9/11. Can you imagine her parents as they face a dinner table where she sat, a little girls bedroom empty now, so empty the silence hurts? The others, some gone, some with their lives terribly interrupted by injury.
A divide of culture, values are beliefs is here and is growing and the ideals we have in common can become hidden and forgotten.
My political arrogance was partially cured one rainy night when my Defeat Bush bumper stickered car had a flat on 101 in the rain. It was a dark and stormy night. A truck wearing two Bush 4 President bumper stickers stopped in the rain, changed my tire and bid me safe passage.
We are all neighbors. Will we harm each other or help each other? Will we tear down or will we build?
Arizona can seem far away but inflammatory speech infects and steals from us all. We may not feel it as sharply as the mom and dad facing empty days without their child or as profoundly as a senator who faces her life as a day to day battle to recover what she can of her life and intellect using a brain that has had a bullet pass through, but we feel it and our lives are less for it.

tra

January 9, 2011 at 10:53 am

I see your point Mitch. Still, I see Angle’s call for “Second Amendment solutions” as a much more direct incitement to violence.

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 10:55 am

Rose wrote that “This guy was a lunatic. And his high school friends are saying he was QUITE LEFTY – some of his favorite books were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf.”

Rose, you’ve ruined your credibility with me, what little you had. Mein Kampf was Hitler’s book, and you can’t get any more RIGHT WING than that.

tra

January 9, 2011 at 10:56 am

Well said, Goldie.

Joel Mielke

January 9, 2011 at 10:57 am

I agree with Mitch about the crosshairs image, especially coming from organized “2nd Amendment” militants.

Walt

January 9, 2011 at 11:08 am

“We are all neighbors. Will we harm each other or help each other? Will we tear down or will we build?” Hear, Hear, Goldie! We CAN help our neighbors, but we only make the world worse by spreading hate and anger, so which path do YOU choose?

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 11:16 am

Skippy seems to imply that most people with mental disorders are violent. That is false.

tra

January 9, 2011 at 11:21 am

Some people who deserve our thanks:

At a press conference on Sunday afternoon, Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik offered more details on how suspected Arizona shooter Jared Loughner was disarmed.

Dupnik said that when Loughner ran out of bullets in his first magazine clip, a woman who had already been shot “went up and grabbed” the new magazine “and tore it away from him.” Dupnik said the name of the woman was known but he did not share it during the press conference.

After the confrontation with the woman, Loughner was able to load another magazine into his weapon, but “the spring in the magazine failed,” Dupnik said, and two men were able to get his weapon away from him and subdue him until law enforcement arrived.

Dupnik said the work of these three people potentially averted a “huge greater catastrophe.”

Even a stable young person is likely to change drastically between the ages of 18-22 this guy was obviously not at all stable. What he was in High School seems pretty meaningless at this point .

Remember that second person of interest? Laughner could very well have been an easily programmable assassin set into murderous motion by other more functional lunatics working behind the scenes in order to further their lunatic political agenda.

Random Guy

January 9, 2011 at 11:32 am

“We should all be careful with our rhetoric”

No. We should evolve beyond petty formalities and giving a shit about namecalling. Maintain perspective and common sense. I gotta go to work now, hopefully when I get back somebody will have murdered the president or blown up a few skyscrapers. I’ll look at internet porn and jack off either way at some point. Have fun talking about sarah palin and crap like that.

skippy

January 9, 2011 at 11:45 am

Anonymous @11:16, that was neither my intention nor implication. My apologies if you read otherwise, and you are correct– that is false.

“”We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps,” said Rebecca Mansour on the Tammy Bruce radio show. Moreover, there was “nothing irresponsible” about the image, and to draw a line connecting Palin and Saturday’s shooting is “obscene” and “appalling.”

Mr/s Heraldo, you’re obviously not able to keep up with the latest history updates. Please try harder in the future, and don’t forget the next two minutes hate.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 12:23 pm

Memo to Rose — you’re also behind the times. Isn’t there some right-wing-propaganda-central you should be tracking more closely?

Joel Mielke

January 9, 2011 at 12:23 pm

Can we pry Charleton Heston’s gun out of his cold dead hand now?

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 12:27 pm

The only problem with that is that Palin, herself, called them “bullseyes,” Mitch. Do surveyors use bullseyes?

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 12:28 pm

Heraldo is right. This has everything to do with Glen Beck, Rush, Hannity and Neil Boortz. We should arrest them all & shut down their radio shows. Arrest Palin and Boehner as well. Outlaw the Republican party and close down Fox News network.

Then we need a new election in Eureka & get rid of Bass/Jaeger/Newman/Ciarabellini and Madsen.

Long live Amerika!

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 12:30 pm

In Alaska they do. All the time. Can’t we move on yet?

Nobody ever said they weren’t bullseyes.

Oh, by the way, I owe Rose an apology. She’s actually pretty up to date after all. From the same piece:

“I don’t understand how anybody could be held responsible for somebody who is completely mentally unstable like this. Where I come from the person that is actually shooting is the one that’s culpable,” Mansour said, before intimating that the suspect, Jared Loughner, is actually a liberal. “It seems that he people that knew him said that he was left-wing and very liberal — but that is not to say that I am blaming the left.”

Leave it to Rose to argue that this nut case is some sort of progressive, to tie in the negative reaction to Sarah “Cross-hairs” Palin and to blame Obama for violent rhetoric.
You want to see where the problem comes from Rose? Look in the mirror and I’m not talking about your friends blog. Hatred runs rampant in this country because of haters like you. While you are praying for the killers mom and pop, say one for yourself.

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 12:41 pm

Rose gets upset when black people or Democrats start using verbs.

telefriend

January 9, 2011 at 12:45 pm

Pray that Big Sis resists the urge to cordon off Sportsman’s Warehouse as a scene of a crime.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 12:47 pm

TurnItDown says:
January 9, 2011 at 10:28 am
Fortunately JL we don’t have to worry about the consequences of your rhetoric because it is largely incomprehensible.

Response: too easy……ah, but your worried now right. Like I said, no pain, no gain. Why do silly people pull faces when it counts and then forget? It seems that people only care long enough until the money and tactics to cover such events has been profit margin exhausted by industry, the media and elected officials. It seems that elected officials don’t really care, nor most people, because events like this still occur without real efforts for practical and principled solutions. So, if “TURNITDOWN” IS REALLY “TURNEDOFF”, then maybe some consideration would be spent on actually learning about history and its results rather than finding something in err by another who posts facts and truth and reality about the history of mankind and what flaws STILL OCCUR IN SLOT MACHINE FASHION.

JACKPOT!

JL

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 12:48 pm

Unless they are using verbs to attack Paul Gallegos

Joel Mielke

January 9, 2011 at 12:49 pm

As for Rose’s assertion that this nut was left-wing, this from The Guardian:

The tone of Loughner’s rantings is almost exclusively conservative and anti-government, with echoes of the populist campaigning of the Tea Party movement. “Don’t trust the government listener!” he said in one video, accusing Washington of mind control and brainwashing.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 12:52 pm

Mitch says:
January 9, 2011 at 10:47 am
tra,

We disagree. The use of a rifle scope as a marking conveys a very different meaning than the use of something like a flag, donkey, elephant, or star.

To some people, it’s “cute.”

How would you feel if a national group drew a political map of the United States with rifle scope marks over, for example, Arcata and San Francisco, or perhaps Colorado Springs.

It’s complete irresponsibility. It would be excusable in a fourth grader, but I’d hope he or she would still get sent to the office.

That’s right JL. The fourth grader could explain in the office that they were drawing Swedish flags, not rifle sights. That would get them off the hook right away.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 1:00 pm

moviedad says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:38 pm
We were all neighbors during the civil war.

Response: prior to that, it was the Revolutionary War. Hmm, come to think of it, then it was the American-Indian war if you will; then, not to forget the chinese slave laborers for western expansionisms; nor the black people called nxxxxrs; then, let’s see, the Japanese Americans during wartime; then……I’ll stop now, the human pain is too much to bare!

JL

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 1:03 pm

Mitch says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:55 pm
That’s right JL. The fourth grader could explain in the office that they were drawing Swedish flags, not rifle sights. That would get them off the hook right away.

Response: I know, your right. People have their own ways at improvisations or tweakings of symbolisms if you will. Good Point.

JL

owltotem

January 9, 2011 at 1:04 pm

Hate breeds hate. When an influential person tells a group of people they should feel threatened, and then explains to them why, it has the capacity to fuel a riot. When the message comes from multiple sources with consistency it has the potential of creating a movement. We have seen this with the Tea Party.

I also have first hand knowledge of locals who owned no firearms being so fueled by rhetoric that they have bought guns and armed themselves. They also believe, and repeat, that as a society we need to prepare for riots and marshal law, they have their sights, and I mean that literally thus the palin crosshairs, set on the 2012 elections. The information that has brought about this change is being disseminated by the Tea Party and its affiliated organizations.

The divide in this country (and our community) grows wider than most of us realize. It is fueled by fear and pits neighbor against neighbor. We must find common ground as friends, family, neighbors, and as a community.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 1:04 pm

Then there’s Giffords opponent in the last race, Kelly, who invited people to “Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

When Palin said, in the caption to the map with crosshair targets, “Don’t retreat, reload,” was she referring to reloading Google Earth?

The other thing they say (and these are locals, not stupid, your neighbors) is that the left, so despondent over a new conservative white president will riot and that as a society we need to be prepared to protect ourselves from the blacks and mexicans that will take up arms in hate. This is coming from hard working blue collar people who have found a sense of community in the Tea Party. I am not making it up, I listen to my co-workers.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 1:12 pm

PJ,

“reloading Google Earth”

Please don’t give Palin’s spokespeople free suggestions.

Anybody remember Joe Toyota?

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 1:14 pm

Joel Mielke says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:49 pm
As for Rose’s assertion that this nut was left-wing, this from The Guardian:

The tone of Loughner’s rantings is almost exclusively conservative and anti-government, with echoes of the populist campaigning of the Tea Party movement. “Don’t trust the government listener!” he said in one video, accusing Washington of mind control and brainwashing.

Response: and yet, the material this crackpot curtailed toward was mixed and matched with information, symbolisms, ideals and/or ideologies, multiple sources of information, etc…. over a time period which was controlled by BOTH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS – otherwise known as the establsihed dualopoly.

The kid lost his composure and was mislead by adults, period – both family and friends, not to mention those specific government officals who are adults that we all should know are corrupt as heck, but since America is sheeple people, it is easier to turn and face away from flaws, put a wide smile on the painted red lips and act like nothing is wrong, but that everything is normal as usual.

Apparantly too, shopping at safeway is not the safe way to shop!

JL

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 1:15 pm

Uh, Rose. That is a commenter’s post at Daily Kos, not Daily Kos. Your source calling it an “article” is absurd.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 1:21 pm

owltotem,

“It can’t happen here.” Words to regret.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 1:41 pm

Since BoyBlue has posted another comment at DailyKos, this time apologizing for all the negative attention it caused DailyKos with people (desperately) trying to connect him to Loughner because (gasp!) they both live in Arizona, he isn’t Loughner – unless Arizona’s reputation for harsh jail conditions is grossly exaggerated and they now allow prisoners internet access and time to blog. I would think they’re keeping Loughner a little busy right now, but that’s just a guess.

It’s ridiculous. Without a scintilla of evidence you leapt to your conclusions. And now, presented with information from people who knew the guy – info that contradicts your happy little scenario, you still persist.

This guy is an insane person. How you get from that to blaming Sarah Palin, who has done nothing to you is anybody’s guess.

But I wonder how many of you expressed one iota of concern when hardcore nutcases like Rodney Coronado actually threatened one of your northcoast neighbors. Not a bit I bet. But you want so desperately to paint the Tea Party as “dangerous” – they weren’t the ones posting bomb-making instructions. So knock it off.

Furthermore, I sincerely doubt that this kid ever read Mein Kampf – it’s just something he threw in there to impress people. Someone who lists the Phantom Tollbooth as his other favorite would have to make a pretty big leap to get there.

It’s more likely he didn’t like the Congresswoman because she was pretty and didn’t pay attention to him than anything else. But all evidence so far says you owe a BIG apology.

anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 2:19 pm

So, Sarah Palin is not at fault, and there was nothing wrong with her tweets, or her crosshairs. They couldn’t possibly have incited it.

She just had an aide saying the choice of icons were surveying markers. Then one of her Tweets re-surfaced, where Sarah Palin called them a Bullseye, and used the reference that she had “targeted” Gabrielle Giffords. The best proof that that it was totally inappropriate was shortly after the shooting, the website and its crosshairs was immediately taken down. If there is nothing wrong with it, why take it down. Why? Obviously she saw there was something wrong, and she needed to take it down. Not before some people did some screen captures and saved it in digital perpetuity.

Hey Rose when is the last time you ever apologized for any of the ridiculous, inflammatory things you say?

owltotem

January 9, 2011 at 2:31 pm

Rose, Apologizing for saying widespread dissemination of propaganda promoting fear and hate would be disingenuous. It wont happen, not from me anyway.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 2:37 pm

The evidence that the right is using violent rhetoric has been all over the news for several years now. It doesn’t take a leap of logic to go from “targeting” using violent imagery and hysterical rhetoric of political opponents to their fanatics trying to “save” the country by killing these people they are told are dangerous extremists with an agenda to destroy the US. Don’t pretend such tactics haven’t been used many times in human history. Since it is only the right who has been using such violent rhetoric and imagery which is specifically chosen to appeal to the gun nuts, you try to justify it by claiming there is some sort of balance between cliches of “fight them” “bring a gun if they bring a knife” “get angry” and putting crosshair targets on opponents along with “reload” and directly connecting shooting automatic weapons with defeating a candidate. Not even you, Rose, could be so obtuse.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 2:52 pm

Hey,

even the sheriff mention something about Reagan’s boondoggle, without having to name Reagan. Something about mental hspitals, incarceration, ???? that allowed the crackpots out on the street.

In the really old days, many of the crackpots would already be dead at the hands of their own parents or, dare I say, the church’s way to deal with deformities of newborns for several hundred years. They culled them really young a way back then. SO really, since those times, society has made some progress, albeit still fails on the approaches and responsibility/liability principles…….when parents make that choice to have children, they are responsible for certain things when that child is an adult. Sorry parents, but many of you are very selfish and greedy people to burden your mistakes upon another to resolve.

JL

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 2:57 pm

Enough political buffs would argue progressive Democrats, led by F. Roosevelt, allowed Pearl Harbor to happen in order to do what PlainJane refers to as solely republicanism. Opposite of that, some of the very same people say that Bush 2 did this as well for the 911 event. I say human beings are capable of anything that they put their minds and efforts toward.

Internal national sabatoge of society is never out of the question with American Politicians usurping the rest of the world, especially the foreign policy hypocrisy.

JL

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 2:57 pm

The evidence comes from the fact that both Rep Giffords and the Judge had been subject to numerous death threats from people whipped up right wing media figures in the very recent past.
Now Rose ,I know you fancy yourself as something of a crime buff.
If someone’s life is being threatened and then shortly thereafter they wind up being shot , would you say it’s unreasonable to be suspicious of the threatener?
Just asking?

Jared Loughner, the suspect accused of killing six people and wounding 13 others Saturday, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was described by
friends and neighbors as a disturbed, pot-smoking loner who lived with his parents.

Additionally, sources tell CBS News that Loughner had made threats in the past and even interacted with Giffords in 2007.

CBS News Justice and Homeland Security correspondent Bob Orr said on “Face the Nation” Sunday, “We do know from our sources and from our national security analyst Juan Zarate that Loughner had an interaction once before with Congresswoman Giffords back in 2007, where he apparently posed a question to her, kind of a benign question.

“She answered the question; he didn’t find it acceptable, he didn’t like the answer,” Orr said.

robash we could just as easily jump to the conclusion that he was deluded by leftwing idiot sites like David Cobb and his Community Currency delusions… couldn’t we now, after watching his YouTube’s c’mon, tell me it didn’t cross your mind. link

So, if it turns out this guy listens to Olberman and Democracy Now! what will you say then?

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 3:40 pm

Show one single piece of evidence where Olbermann or Democracy Now have EVER used violent imagery, Rose. Or David Cobb, for that matter. It’s the acceptance of violence to achieve goals that is the issue. Where are the left wing militias carrying weapons to political events wearing “water the tree of liberty” tee shirts? Where are the Democratic politicians telling their supporters to reload to defeat Republicans or talking about 2nd amendment remedies? The right owns this mess even if the killer turns out to be to the left of Che Guevara.

He’s been stalking her since 2007, Jane – expand your horizons just a bit.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 4:09 pm

Stalking her? Attending a campaign event hardly constitutes stalking, unless you have new information of other contacts. Factual, of course, not blog claims like the one you posted about Kos. That was hilarious in its desperation.

An

January 9, 2011 at 4:09 pm

ahhhh according to everyone who knew him he was a left wing loon. nice try though.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 4:17 pm

Gee and here I thought the left was pro big government. I get so confused trying to keep up with right wing rhetoric.

Pima Community College issued a statement about Loughner Saturday at 7:35 p.m. The statement described Loughner as a former student who withdrew from the college in October after being suspected for code of conduct violations.

“From February to September 2010, Loughner had five contacts with PCC police for classroom and library disruptions at Northwest and West campuses,” the statement read. “On September 29, 2010, college police discovered on YouTube a Loughner-filmed video made at Northwest Campus. In the video, he claims that the College is illegal according to the U.S. Constitution, and makes other claims.”

The college said it told Loughner that if he wanted to come back to school, he must “must resolve his Code of Conduct violations and obtain a mental health clearance indicating, in the opinion of a mental health professional, his presence at the College does not present a danger to himself or others.” …The college said it had no further contact with him after that…

The man arrested on suspicion of [the shootings] tried to manipulate his dreams and posted rambling messages on the Internet… A former classmate of Loughner at Pima, from which he was suspended Sept. 29 for code-of-conduct violations, said he was “obviously very disturbed.”

“He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts,” said Lynda Sorenson, who took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College’s Northwest campus… Dupnik said the suspected shooter has made death threats before and been contacted by law-enforcement officers. The threats weren’t against Giffords, Dupnik said.

Loughner’s classmate at Pima, said he was asked to leave the pre-algebra class several times and eventually was barred from class… Another Pima classmate, Lydian Ali, said Loughner would frequently laugh aloud to himself during the advanced-poetry class they attended. Only about 16 people were in the class, so Loughner’s behavior stood out, Ali said… “It almost seemed like he was on his own planet, because his comments would have nothing to do with what we were talking about,” Ali said.

Loughner’s online accounts contain some political comments but are dominated by bizarre discussions of his desire to establish a new currency and his disdain for what he considered the public’s low literacy rates. He also wrote threatening and despairing messages… “WOW! I’m glad i didn’t kill myself. I’ll see you on National T.v.! This is foreshadow …. why doesn’t anyone talk to me?..” he posted on MySpace Dec. 14. [The day before,] he wrote: “I don’t feel good: I’m ready to kill a police officer! I can say it.” … In a posting on YouTube, Loughner wrote repeatedly about a new currency.

Loughner has had at least two minor run-ins with police, online court records show… In October 2007, Loughner was cited by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department for possession of drug paraphernalia, a charge that was dismissed in November 2007 when he completed a diversion program… One year later, in October 2008, Loughner faced a “local charge” in Marana Municipal Court. That charge was also dismissed following the completion of a diversion program in March 2009.

And Jane, when I post links, it is so you can go to the site and READ THE WHOLE DAMN THING FOR YOURSELF, NOT TO TRY TO OBFUSCATE ANYTHING, QUITE THE OPPOSITE. You – and anyone else- can draw your own conclusions. Nothing’s going to change your mind, though.

Thomas Paine Jr

January 9, 2011 at 4:30 pm

This guy was, a right wing nut case.
Stop trying to say that the Nazi’s were left wing, they were not.
Just to be real clear here, guns are a right wing deal.
ANYONE ELSE SEE HIS YOU TUBE CHANNEL?

He was a tea party creep just like the creeps that brought guns to the Obama rally.

The nation is more divided than we were before the civil war, and I think we may be headed for a new one. Soon.

owltotem

January 9, 2011 at 4:36 pm

Then it is our responsibility as a community to seek commonground now.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 4:37 pm

Rose,

Nobody cares whether Loughner is or is not a card carrying member of the tea party or, for that matter, the ACLU.

The concern is that tea party people and the right wing have, through violent rhetoric and imagery, encouraged mentally ill persons to take potshots at politicians of the center and left.

You know it, I know it, PJ knows it, most people reading this blog know it. I respect your intelligence, so I don’t think you really believe much of what you write here. I just wonder why you write it.

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 4:44 pm

Mitch 12.16pm you fucking idiot. It was The obama.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 4:51 pm

Thank you, 4:44. He sounds like an awful person.

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 4:52 pm

You people who are willing to jump on the bandwagon and blame this on Sarah Palin must be desperate. Whatever works for your current argument. The fact remains, this person would be violent no matter what.

Hey Rose-did the San Francisco Chronicle get it wrong, as well? Their front page article in today’s paper highlighted Sarah Palin’s targeted map, and spoke about how everyone in the country is talking about how politics in this country are becoming more and more violent. If politicians are going to call for extreme action against others that don’t share the same beliefs, allow an atmosphere of discrimination and bigotry at their rallies, and publish maps with gun targets highlighting Democrats that need to be “removed”, then you better fucking believe that they bare responsibility! They have created this atmosphere, and shame on you for defending it. Think about each person that lost their life yesterday and those that are fighting for their lives right now-and then try to justify supporting hate. You are the supporter of hate and hate speech, and this is where it has led.

skippy

January 9, 2011 at 5:23 pm

To Dearest Rose and Plain Jane (and everyone else… you know who you are. 147 posts in under 24 hours– and it’s a sunny day out?): Outstanding posts, links, and reporting. Thank you.

Your information is accurate from my reading. So now, how can both of you be correct and true?

Political assassinations are political. Using violent rhetoric as political tools is political. Pretending that violent political rhetoric isn’t propaganda designed primarily to incite strong emotion in those hearing it is delusional. I’m seriously beginning to wonder if these right wing nuts are hoping to ignite a civil war.

Two Sicknesses On Display in Arizona
The shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of several people by gunman Jared Loughner in Arizona yesterday has revealed two sicknesses.

The first and most serious is the sickness living in Loughner’s head. Evidence in the form of farewell videos, internet postings, and the recollections of people who knew him reveal a profoundly disturbed person who had veered far into a paranoid world. Loughner’s complaints about government mind control and other rants were not “anti-government” in any political sense, but anti-government or anarchist in the Ted Kazynski-deranged sense. We do not know Loughner’s motives, but those motives whatever they were were the byproduct of Loughner’s clearly delusional view of the world.

There also was a second sickness on display, and it was the swiftness and the vigor with which the left-wing blogosphere and some more mainstream Democrats immediately sought to blame Sarah Palin and right-wing “vitriol” in general for the shooting.Two Sicknesses On Display in Arizona

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 5:35 pm

Furthermore, the latest news reports that Loughner was taking Palin’s advise – trying to reload when he was tackled and his murder spree came to an end.

jane, there is no evidence that this was political – other than the fact that she is an elected official – it is more likely a case of unrequited love of sorts – come on, you see this here locally, and you laugh at the YouTubes.

To call this a political assassination is in and of itself insane and delusional.

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 5:38 pm

skippy,

Sunny but *cold*.

mresquan

January 9, 2011 at 5:39 pm

“blaming people who have absolutely nothing to do with this lone nut case.”

If I’m not mistaken,police are searching for a second person,the man who drove him there.But funny you lambast people who point out Palin’s website,but then you conclude that somehow David Cobb deserves to be brought into this and can’t seem to be able to reference anywhere where he has made any sort of statement even coming close to inciting violence.Hey,at least you aren’t blaming anything on Salzman though.
And yes Rose,even hints of hate speech or threats are confronted here,and certainly on this very blog which wrote about the Arkley/Glass incident,and the Chris Holmquist/Neely incident.

It’s also worth pointing out that one of your heros is also one of the very few who actually was part of violent political action – good ol’ Billy Ayres. People actually did die. But that’s ok with you.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 5:42 pm

When did Ayers become any one’s hero? It’s worth pointing out that Rose is building straw men again.

Mresquan, I read a bit ago that the guy was a taxi driver who just delivered him, no other connection.

mresquan – while you are assigning crazy motives to the nutcase – and he is ranting about wanting a new currency – to merely point out that it is just as likely that he was motivated by a nutcase like Cobb as a means of trying to get you people to get a grip – I give up.

You are insane. You WANT this to lead to further hate and bloodshed. You have completely made up your own scenario. No facts or information to the contrary will sway you. But the media will drop this like a hot potato since it clearly is not a “right-winger” – and you’ll hear about it again in the top 10 stories of the year.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 5:45 pm

“Sunny but *cold*.”

But warm inside where I worked 10 hours today and was still able to keep up with posts.

mresquan

January 9, 2011 at 5:45 pm

“To call this a political assassination is in and of itself insane and delusional.”

I don’t get the impression that the Congresswoman,and for that matter her and the judge,were the only intended victims.I get the impression that he was out to kill anyone there who may have potentially shared the political beliefs of hers.The more conspiracy oriented websites like prisonplanet.com draw some sort of a conclusion that he was working in collusion with the man who drove him to the Safeway parking lot.

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 5:46 pm

Indeed, she was an elected official who had her life threatened in the past by far right ideologues..

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 5:54 pm

Had her life threaetened in the very recent past byfar rightists I might add.

I can’t help but wonder what Rose’s definition of a political assassination is. Mine is the murder of a politician for political reasons.

Reality Check

January 9, 2011 at 5:57 pm

No wonder no one respects you Rose.
No one believes that the gunman was taking direction from Palin or Glen Beck, or Bill O’Reilly, but that have pushed for an atmosphere of zero tolerance to others opinions, have called for violence and aggression. Don’t you fucking understand that! Get over yourself and quit blaming the left-wing-it’s pathetic and disgusting. People have died because assholes like yourself are unwilling to accept that it’s your unwillingness to stand against hate speech and violence that have created this tragedy.

owltotem

January 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm

OK where is commonground between PJ and Rose, do you garden? walk in the woods? like classical music? italian food? do you beachcomb, love your children? grandchildren? What do you both appreciate, what do you share? Is there something we can do together? I’ll help. As a society, as a community, we must find commonground where we can discover our similarities and learn how to appreciate eachother, faults included, we all have them. The further the divide the less effective we become as a community. Many hands folks, coming together to achieve great things.

And yes Skips, it was gorgeous, we are lucking out with weather for January and dig the sliver crescent smiling down right now. We are truly blessed.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Correction, that should have said guys since the article is about 2 nuts that Glenn Beck incited to murder.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 6:09 pm

From the article: “Beck has at times spoken against violence, but he more often forecasts it, warning that “it is only a matter of time before an actual crazy person really does something stupid.” Most every broadcast has some violent imagery: “The clock is ticking. . . . The war is just beginning. . . . Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government. . . . You have to be prepared to take rocks to the head. . . . The other side is attacking. . . . There is a coup going on. . . . Grab a torch! . . . Drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers. . . . They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered. . . . They are putting a gun to America’s head. . . . Hold these people responsible.”

Please further note the date of this article (8/10) and the dates of the murders by these right wing nuts (7/10 and 4/09). Did they calm down their rhetoric? Just the opposite.

Allan Dollison

January 9, 2011 at 6:19 pm

Oh Rose is just upset that this can’t be blamed on Gallegos. She appears to have abandoned watchpaul which helped him get re-elected. She is now a TCOH. Top Conservative on Heraldo.

Anon

January 9, 2011 at 6:20 pm

and George Bush ordered the planes into the twin towers…ya ya ya, we have heard all this befor. Meanwhile people who knew him describe him as a leftist pot head…no wonder so many here identify with him

But PJ and Rose are just typing, not shooting. I’m sure they could find common ground, but I doubt it will be about politics. And the current discussion is about what’s happened to politics in the United States, so I wouldn’t expect PJ and Rose to start singing kumbaya.

My sister is one of the most level-headed, calm people I know. She’s lived in many parts of the country and now lives in North Carolina near the South Carolina Border. She’s also in her (OMG) late 60s.

I’m more than a decade younger, and I remember how, when I was in my teens and early twenties, she would always try to calm me down at family gatherings.

She’s given up trying to discuss politics with her neighbors — she simply shuts it down and says if they want to be friends, there are certain things she won’t discuss with them. When they say, “yeah, but,” she walks away. She is so disgusted with the Republican Party that I now need to calm HER down, and to anyone who knows ME, that’s a bit of a laugh.

Sometimes being angry is actually the appropriate response. It’s being able to control the anger so that you use it appropriately that is the challenge, not neutralizing it. (And I’ll admit, I fail at that challenge a lot.)

Americans *should* be angry at what has been done and is still being done to our country. And it is being done by the right wing, not the left. Hell, there isn’t really any left any more anyway.

The people who think President Obama is on the left need to explain how it is that he has installed friends of bankers to deal with bank fraud, has saved the largest car company in the country without keeping it state-owned, and has left troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama is clearly a pragmatic moderate politician (something that infuriates most people I know on the left).

President Obama can speak in full sentences. Based on recent American history, people think that means he must be a leftist. It’s not that simple.

skippy

January 9, 2011 at 6:32 pm

Wow. Heavens to Betsy! 27 more posts in the past 45 minutes. What a hot issue, I had no idea. Good to see our Humboldt keeping up with the rest of the nation beyond the Redwood Curtain.

Despite what 5:57 says, I respect you Rose– and like your information. Plain Jane– nice reading your link at 5:57, and keeping up after working 10 hours.

Yes, it’s cold out– and Owltotem, I did see that crescent moon and stars out. Stay warm and dry, all.

Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride by tomorrow morning.

We'reAllCrazy

January 9, 2011 at 6:37 pm

Heraldo, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 6:39 pm

This guy sounds more and more like a Libertarian which is essentially socially very liberal and fiscally very conservative. Lots of people confuse libertarianism with the left but it is mostly very far right.

Pained Jane

January 9, 2011 at 6:48 pm

Jane, please go back to work.

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 6:55 pm

I appreciate your insight, Jane, and I’m not alone in my appreciation.

“I get the impression that he was out to kill anyone there who may have potentially shared the political beliefs of hers.”

Really, nresquan? I get the feeling that he is getting exactly what he wanted – he was nothing, now he is SOMEBODY. Now everyone knows his name and is paying attention to him. Suddenly they care about what he cared about, why he thought, why he thinks what he thinks – he went to one of her meetings, he asked her a question… and as she answered, he saw that look flicker across her eyes, that said he was a nobody, asking a stupid question, and he was ashamed… she had everything he did not, chief among them recognition.

But NOW – those eyes are closed or in pain and he is happy. Now you care about him, and he is not so insignificant.

It has NOTHING to do with anyone else. Not Glenn Beck. Not Rush. He laughs at your constructs. And in reality, even he does not know why he did what he did. He just did it.

Did it erase his pain? I doubt it.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 6:59 pm

Plain Jane says:
January 9, 2011 at 3:40 pm
Show one single piece of evidence where Olbermann or Democracy Now have EVER used violent imagery, Rose. Or David Cobb, for that matter. It’s the acceptance of violence to achieve goals that is the issue. Where are the left wing militias carrying weapons to political events wearing “water the tree of liberty” tee shirts? Where are the Democratic politicians telling their supporters to reload to defeat Republicans or talking about 2nd amendment remedies? The right owns this mess even if the killer turns out to be to the left of Che Guevara.

Response: and it is denial of the reasons for violence that perpetuates its continuation!

JL

Respect

January 9, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Jane-keep calling a spade a spade-we get it! Those who don’t understand truth and reality are afraid of you. Don’t waste your time with the ignorant, they prefer living this way.

Jared Loughner’s behavior recorded by college classmate in e-mails
By David A. Fahrenthold
In early June, Lynda Sorenson, 52, had gone back to community college in Tucson in hopes of getting back on the job market. One of her classes was a basic algebra class–and one of her classmates was Jared Loughner, now identified by authorities as the man who killed six people and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in a shooting rampage Saturday. Sorenson’s e-mails to friends from last summer, provided to the Washington Post, reveal her growing alarm at Loughner’s strange and disruptive
behavior in class.

From June 1, the first day of class:
“One day down and nineteen to go. We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I’m not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit. The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.”

From June 10:
“As for me, Thursday means the end to week two of algebra class. It seems to be going by quickly, but then I do have three weeks to go so we’ll see how I feel by then. Class isn’t dull as we have a seriously disturbed student in the class, and they are trying to figure out how to get rid of him before he does something bad, but on the other hand, until he does something bad, you can’t do anything about him. Needless to say, I sit by
the door.”

From June 14:
“We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast…”

The class’s instructor, Ben McGahee, said in an interview Sunday that Loughner had been removed from class in its third or fourth week, because of repeated disruptions.

Nobody cares whether Loughner is or is not a card carrying member of the tea party or, for that matter, the ACLU.

The concern is that tea party people and the right wing have, through violent rhetoric and imagery, encouraged mentally ill persons to take potshots at politicians of the center and left.

You know it, I know it, PJ knows it, most people reading this blog know it. I respect your intelligence, so I don’t think you really believe much of what you write here. I just wonder why you write it.

Response: So, we all agree the media (television, computers, radio, blogs, etc.) compounded and added ill will to the fervor of the fire in a crackpot’s mindset so he could explode with historic greatness.

Yeah, the left don’t control the media and Nancy Pelosi don’t speak of astro-turf and swastikas and lambasting people by inciting them through intimidating them with outright lying and distortion of social events – this is why crackpots can explode as well!

JL

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 7:09 pm

Rose-do you really not see an issue with advocating violence against those with different beliefs? That is what is puzzling me more than anything with your stance. Why should we tolerate or accept any sort of language from any leader that is advocating hate and violence? Did Sarah Palin not create that map-and did she not use scope symbols for the Democrats that needed to be removed? Is there no symbolism in that?

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 7:13 pm

Plain Jane says:
January 9, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Political assassinations are political. Using violent rhetoric as political tools is political. Pretending that violent political rhetoric isn’t propaganda designed primarily to incite strong emotion in those hearing it is delusional. I’m seriously beginning to wonder if these right wing nuts are hoping to ignite a civil war.

Response: It seems the people of this country made violent rhetoric a political tool when this country was being formed and then defended. Thank You PJ for giving a bit of your inside self as to why your rhetoric is so hateful and intended to emit strong emotions.

JL

Mitch

January 9, 2011 at 7:13 pm

The comment at 6:58, given its source, is telling.

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 7:14 pm

. methinks Rose doth protest too much No one disputes the fact that he was a nutter Rose , the question at hand is what set him off to try to mudrer the Congresswoman. Events like this don’t occour in a vacuum. feeling defensive Rose? perhaps you have good reason to feel that way.

mresquan

January 9, 2011 at 7:15 pm

“Did Sarah Palin not create that map-and did she not use scope symbols for the Democrats that needed to be removed? Is there no symbolism in that?”

7:09 – do you not want to see that the DNC created a similar map long before Palin? Used similar terminology? That KOS features articles advocating a BULLSEYE on her and others?

It’s metaphorical – and it is used all the time.

But you don’t care, you just want to use this to smear Palin and indulge in your Palin Derangement Syndrome. The same irrational hatred of a female in office that appears to have led to this horrific tragedy – and you don’t see it.

And, btw – I also don’t indulge in blaming video game makers when some whacko goes off – blame the whacko, period.

Joel Mielke

January 9, 2011 at 7:23 pm

“He laughs at your constructs.”

Rose reads the mind of a madmen and shares their his thoughts with us.

yeah, mresquan, you ZERO in on the target – gasp!! Oh MY! What could that mean? OMG, crosshairs? Target! Big Box, it’s the corporations that have done this! The right-wing corporate jobocracy conspiracy! OMG! A word! It causes lunatics to go around shooting Legislators! Who knew! That’s why they never live more than a couple months in office. how could I not get it.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 7:24 pm

robash141 says:
January 9, 2011 at 7:14 pm
. methinks Rose doth protest too much No one disputes the fact that he was a nutter Rose , the question at hand is what set him off to try to mudrer the Congresswoman. Events like this don’t occour in a vacuum. feeling defensive Rose? perhaps you have good reason to feel that way.

Response: The “what” may be a whole lotta things put together and not solely a singular grievance as the left controlled media has reported often too.

Face it folks, we are living in dire times which is teetering on the brink of partial to complete social disaster.

JL

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Rose says:
January 9, 2011 at 7:21 pm
7:09 – do you not want to see that the DNC created a similar map long before Palin? Used similar terminology? That KOS features articles advocating a BULLSEYE on her and others?

It’s metaphorical – and it is used all the time.

But you don’t care, you just want to use this to smear Palin and indulge in your Palin Derangement Syndrome. The same irrational hatred of a female in office that appears to have led to this horrific tragedy – and you don’t see it.

And, btw – I also don’t indulge in blaming video game makers when some whacko goes off – blame the whacko, period.

Response: I blame the video game makers’ motives, government regulators’ motives and the parents lack of better parenting…..in addition to a persaon just being a crackpot. No doubt violent video games, especially the real life military versions, are used as indoctrination techniques to further the interests of young children to eventually want to sign-up and kill people for those political wargames that elected assassins choose to execute.

JL

Plain Jane

January 9, 2011 at 7:37 pm

Notice that Rose won’t comment on the 2 men that Beck incited to murder which I linked above? One of them went after a Beck “enemy” after he repeatedly “targeted” them on his shows, The Tides Foundation, as reported by the nuts’ own mother and hoped to start a revolution. The other a contributor of a Beck video to a neo Nazi site. Neo Nazis recognize their own.

Joel Mielke

January 9, 2011 at 7:39 pm

Rose is competing with the Henchman for most difficult to decipher post.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 7:49 pm

Joel Mielke says:
January 9, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Rose is competing with the Henchman for most difficult to decipher post.

Rose devolves into gibberish when she can’t support her claims, probably cognitive dissonance. First she tried to involve Kos in a conspiracy that was laughable on its face. Then she claimed that the left uses violent rhetoric too, but couldn’t provide a single piece of evidence to support it other than common cliches that no one thought was a call to violence. Ignoring the guys obvious right wing anti-government views, she keeps calling him a lefty because he smoked pot and some kids from school thought he was. Kids I went to school would describe me as quiet and studious. But that was then….

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 9, 2011 at 7:53 pm

Plain Jane says:
January 9, 2011 at 7:49 pm
Rose devolves into gibberish when she can’t support her claims, probably cognitive dissonance. First she tried to involve Kos in a conspiracy that was laughable on its face. Then she claimed that the left uses violent rhetoric too, but couldn’t provide a single piece of evidence to support it other than common cliches that no one thought was a call to violence. Ignoring the guys obvious right wing anti-government views, she keeps calling him a lefty because he smoked pot and some kids from school thought he was. Kids I went to school would describe me as quiet and studious. But that was then….

Response: At least you admit you were like a loner back then. Good thing you have not assassinated anyone beyond their character.

JL

Eric Kirk

January 9, 2011 at 7:56 pm

It’s metaphorical – and it is used all the time.

By whom? Examples?

The Monitor

January 9, 2011 at 8:10 pm

There is plenty of blame to go around to explain why this guy took the path he did. Do we want to keep the public forum as it is with the language of hate, don’t trust anyone who thinks differently than you. Demonize them. Then to not expect it might lead to this takes real denial. What do you bet nothing changes. Joseph McCarthy is smiling.

More drugs and more sodomy, then the only one you want to kill is yourself.

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 9:05 pm

Ah the Reverend Phelps, keeping it classy..

robash141

January 9, 2011 at 9:37 pm

I just went through the looking glass to read Rose’s link apparently according to the post, The Reverend Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church is also a left winger. Who woulda thunk it?

Joel Mielke

January 9, 2011 at 9:56 pm

Rose woulda thunk it.

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 10:14 pm

I haven’t posted in awhile & came back today to see if things have improved here.

Nope. You’re still all idiots. And Heraldo still has no class.

Bye.

mresquan

January 9, 2011 at 10:21 pm

The humboldt mirror jumped onto this post on their blog.I wanted to repost a comment I left there here as I have no intention of further discussing anything on this issue over there.

“mresquan, on January 9, 2011 at 10:12 pm said:

No one is blaming Palin.Just pointing out that her violent rhetoric could have spurred a messed up dude who shared some of her beliefs on issues,into thinking that killing some people who had different political views would solve a few personal problems,and in his messed up mind see that his actions may seen as being acceptable by some who shared those beliefs.I won’t be staying here for this particular thread as I expect some vile comments to come my way for putting things into my perspective.”

Anonymous

January 9, 2011 at 10:23 pm

And Rose used to be so defensive of Mark! She has seen the ilght.

All this aside, how about a little sympathy for 19 families in Arizona.

skippy

January 9, 2011 at 10:25 pm

209 posts. It’s been something, people. Maybe the Double H will see a new record. Who knows what tomorrow’s news and posts will bring. Whew, I’m tired. You? Going to bed now, see you in the morning, all. Y’all done well.

So, Rose, your link seems to admit that 9/11 was GWB’s lucky break. Funny how the article overlooked that it was the shenanigans of Gingrich and company that boosted the fortunes of Clinton in 96, more so than the Oklahoma City bombing. All you’ve accomplished with your two most recent links is to show everyone how stupid you are.

Loughner was angry about her response — she read the question and didn’t have much to say.

“He was like … ‘What do you think of these people who are working for the government and they can’t describe what they do?'” one friend told The Associated Press on Sunday. “He did not like government officials, how they spoke. Like they were just trying to cover up some conspiracy.”

Both friends spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they wanted to avoid the publicity surrounding the case. To them, the question was classic Jared: confrontational, nonsensical and obsessed with how words create reality.
The friends’ comments paint a picture bolstered by other former classmates and Loughner’s own Internet postings: that of a social outcast with nihilistic, almost indecipherable beliefs steeped in mistrust and paranoia.

“If you call me a terrorist then the argument to call me a terrorist is Ad hominem,” the 22-year-old wrote Dec. 15 in a wide-ranging screed that was posted in video form and ended with nearly the same question his friends said he posed to Giffords: “What’s government if words don’t have meaning?”
On Sunday, Loughner was charged in the shootings a day earlier at a political event outside a Tucson supermarket. Aside from the six killed, 14 people were injured. Doctors were optimistic about Giffords’ chances for survival.
Loughner had at least one other contact with Giffords. Investigators said they carried out a search warrant at Loughner’s home and seized a letter addressed to him from Giffords’ congressional stationery in which she thanked him for attending a “Congress on your Corner” event at a mall in Tucson in 2007. Saturday’s shooting occurred at a similar event.

Other evidence seized from his home included an envelope from a safe with messages such as “I planned ahead,” “My assassination” and the name “Giffords” next to what appears to be Loughner’s signature.

owltotem

January 9, 2011 at 11:04 pm

nite skips

treesnstuff

January 9, 2011 at 11:13 pm

good god, when i posted on this thread last night i thought it would be interesting to see how the conversation developed. now returning to this thread tonight i see that this conversation didn’t go very deep. i’m very interested what events like this shooting say about our culture and our society on the macro level. who cares about sarah palin, the books the guy read (i like “radical” books too, they’re more interesting than reading charlotte bronte or some similar crap), if he smoked pot, etc. why does this keep happening in our society? are we going to address the root issues or just slap another band-aid of security theatre onto our already sick, neurotic culture? we can call the guy a lone nut, but why does our society produce so many alienated, lone nuts? for every lone nut who goes on a shooting rampage, there are a thousand more hermetic, pained souls out there. we need to fix the way we live as human beings; what we’re doing now ain’t working.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 12:16 am

Funny how the mind of madness can link two unrelated concepts.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 12:19 am

Like drugs and sodomy.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 4:54 am

Rose is so intellectually dishonest that its no wonder she lies to herself.

It wasn’t Time Magazine who said, “TIME mag: Maybe a horrendous act of violence will kill hundreds, even thousands, of Americans and thereby brighten Obama’s political future” it was the right wing weekly rag, The Washington Times Byron York who “read Halperin’s mind” and decided that is what he meant when he said,”No one wants the country to suffer another catastrophe. But when a struggling Bill Clinton was faced with the Oklahoma City bombing and a floundering George W. Bush was confronted by 9/11, they found their voices and a route to political revival.”

Rose’s intellectual capacity is such that she is incapable of critical thought. The article made it clear that neither Time nor Halperin said what the Washington Times’ headline implied they said, but maybe she just didn’t read it all or couldn’t understand it.

The right wing has already answered his questions, “So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?” They are already claiming this is solely the responsibility of a nut case and go on with their eliminationist rhetoric” as before. It’s not like this is the first case of a nut being incited to murder by the right wing media and they’ve only increased their craziness. Like I said above, it’s beginning to look like they are deliberately trying to stoke the flames of civil war.

But I thought you lefty idiots were saying he was a Palin following Right winger?

and you wanted him to be a tea party poster boy soooo bad.

owltotem

January 10, 2011 at 6:49 am

The media fuels the hatred, they will sell what people are buying. When it becomes repulsive to the viewer the media will sell something else. It is not reasonable to believe that there is not a large faction of conservatives that believe the situation will elevate to a point where it is necessary to take up arms. They say it will be in response to a left uprising. It is our responsibility to not play into it.

Mitch said, “Sometimes being angry is actually the appropriate response. It’s being able to control the anger so that you use it appropriately that is the challenge, not neutralizing it.

I do not agree: Anger is often about Fear, it is about protecting our primary needs and driving off forces that threaten those needs, the Hate grows from the threat. I believe anger is not the appropriate response. It works on both sides, the ”left” is being perceived as a threat, thus the right fears that threat thus, threat>fear>anger>blame>hate.

Mitch said “Americans *should* be angry at what has been done and is still being done to our country.”

Ultimately this statement takes us down the same path threat>fear>anger>blame>hate

Again I do not agree (however Mitch is not a threat): People should identify the source of that powerful emotion or discomfort, then seek a solution. We have to break the “threat to hate” chain and using anger will only create deeper hate.

In this case, we have media and political driven polarization, it sells because they (we)believe it, they (we) have found a sense of family, community commonground. After 911 it was behind the flag the country found commonground (ultimately using the same chain). We need to find new commonground. Something that appeals to all humans preferably something that is not fueled by a threat. That is a huge, long, order to fill, but we must, as brothers on this planet start.

Funny, I don’t remember the lefties here getting their panties all in a bunch over this call to crazies to murder Sarah Palin?

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 7:23 am

Poor Anon can’t differentiate between political candidates, elected politicians and national broadcasters calling for elimination of their opponents and a private citizen putting up a hateful display. That’s just the sort of false equivalence Krugman spoke of.

Additionally, there were numerous “lefties” upset about that display because we don’t want to be linked to such craziness and don’t support it. However, there was no law broken and it was just part of a cracked person’s Halloween decorations and certainly didn’t rise to the level of the daily incitement from Beck and most of the commentators at Fox.

Mitch

January 10, 2011 at 7:24 am

owltotem writes:

“People should identify the source of that powerful emotion or discomfort, then seek a solution. We have to break the “threat to hate” chain and using anger will only create deeper hate.”

Owltotem certainly offers food for thought. And “seeking a solution” is certainly appropriate. And I agree with owltotem to the extent that acting from anger only leads to greater problems.

But I disagree with owltotem that anger inevitably takes us down the path to hate. I think it may well be the cloaking of anger that leads there.

I admire spiritual leaders who are able to remain calm when they are presented with good reason to fear. I just wonder how often those in power try to convince people that we should behave like sheep, and how often the message “anger is bad” is used as support for the intended message of “mind your own business.”

But this is all something about which I have little confidence. I just know that I am angry, intensely angry, about what the right wing is doing to our country. And I know that, in that anger, I have no wish to mimic those on the right. If people like owltotem feel I shouldn’t be angry, I’d hope they would have more specific advice to offer than “seek a solution.”

robash141

January 10, 2011 at 7:39 am

The reason Rose and the other trolls are so defensive about their hate vitriol is because they really don’t have any ideas beyond demonizing their enemies.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 10, 2011 at 7:40 am

Skippy,

your well loved and appreciated, despite what rhetorical thoughts and expressions are bandied about.

To reiterate owltotem: owltotem writes:

“People should identify the source of that powerful emotion or discomfort, then seek a solution. We have to break the “threat to hate” chain and using anger will only create deeper hate.”

Response: “and it is denial of the reasons for violence that perpetuates its continuation!”

JL

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 10, 2011 at 7:46 am

Robash,

ideas in a situation like this are mostly irrelative, while facts and documentation, on the other hand, is what non-transparent trolls don’t want when spreading their hatred and vitriol – it works more than one way, obviuosly.

This blog sure represents a side – good thing not all posters are part of that side, otherwise what would there be to discuss.

JL

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 10, 2011 at 7:51 am

Mitch made an intersting comment here,

“I admire spiritual leaders who are able to remain calm when they are presented with good reason to fear.”

Response: Spiritual leaders have the easiest and fakest responsibilities on the face of this “God-fearing, err God-less mocking” PLANET! Spiritual leaders are a fricken JOKE and not what I would rely upon as accurate or honest support. Spiritual leaders are just as blasphemist as the blasphemy they teach, period. Several Hundred Years of abuse and the sheeple still follow the herd…………moooooooooooooooooooooo!

JL

Mitch

January 10, 2011 at 7:54 am

Anon 7:11,

The story you cite is that of a liberal leader — the mayor of West Hollywood — condemning someone who demonizes a politician. If the GOP leadership would have simply done the same, we would not be in the position we find ourselves in today.

If you are looking for examples of fools on both sides, I’m sure you will have no problem finding them. The problem is when the national leadership of a party begins pushing the fools on, rather than condemning their worst overreaches.

Anon

January 10, 2011 at 8:05 am

Wow! I learned so much reading this thread.
Pot smoking leftist Satan worshipers who kill are now part of the Tea Party movement and take secret messages from sarah palin.

Who woulda known.

Mitch

January 10, 2011 at 8:14 am

An image from Brad Blog:

Mitch

January 10, 2011 at 8:18 am

And Glenn Beck, courtesy of a link from Brad Blog:

Anon

January 10, 2011 at 8:19 am

The only time you guys call for calm and not making “a rush to judgement” is if the guy is on his knees five times a day to Allah.

In this case you should have ignored the Move On memo to create contrived outrage and followed your own advise.

Turns out…he is one of you.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 8:21 am

Poor Anon needs to refresh his understanding of political parties. Most of the shooter’s ideology fits the Libertarian Party which is far right wing on government policies without religious trappings and is pro legalization of drugs. He fits the Tea Party to a, well, T.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 10, 2011 at 8:40 am

Anon says:
January 10, 2011 at 8:19 am
The only time you guys call for calm and not making “a rush to judgement” is if the guy is on his knees five times a day to Allah.

In this case you should have ignored the Move On memo to create contrived outrage and followed your own advise.

Turns out…he is one of you.

Response: Kinda depends on who is applying the clothes that fit the mentality of an individual mindset which went haneous.

Nevertheless – the shooter is more likely the product of an extremely dysfunctional home life, as information emerges you will see this. Blowing it up to include all of your hated political figures is laughable, which has been the point some of us are trying to make in light of “heraldo’s” hate-filled knee-jerk inflammatory post.

It’s a sick individual, not tied to the national psychosis.

Mitch

January 10, 2011 at 9:20 am

Progress. Rose acknowledges “the national psychosis.” Now, Rose, what do you think of the Glenn Beck clip at 8:18? Statesmanship? Or something that the Republican party should condemn?

Anon

January 10, 2011 at 9:22 am

Now that this guy is a known satan worshiping liberal, when the pics start popping up of him wearing an Obama button will there be calls to shut down Keith Olbermann and the rest of them? How about the constant attacks on Arkley here? Don’t even try and tell me he isn’t being demonized on this place. If some nutball does something when the Marina Center breaks ground will there be calls from the same libs here to shut down the Herald? In the name of tollerance.

Stupid me. I forgot. It’s only hate speech if conservatives state something that doesn’t fit in with a liberal agenda.

Some folks who support the direction the country has taken in regards to its richest business class, are self-directed “Monkey-Wrenchers”. They are like terrorist-cells who require no direct management from their leaders. they know what to do so they just do it. Go on “Liberal” or “Progressive” blogs and defend the indefensible. Talk about how great the rich are and why we should just shut up and remember we are slaves and owe our lives to them.
The common thread in all their rhetoric is money. Money is the only thing that matters. The wealth/business/elite class is republican, and conservative in that they want to continue the status quo. The notion of a “Hard Left” is preposterous. The “Left” in the minds of the aristocracy is someone like Giffords, or Obama. Politicians who support banks, economic violence, restrictions on human rights, attacks on the constitutional protections of the Bill of Rights, full blind support of global corporations over the lives and livelihoods of the vast majority of citizens; these actions somehow add up to “Leftist”
If you work for your money, you are not in league with the wealth-class of this country. Those who support the aristocracy over and above the rest of us are no different than Jews supporting Hitler in the 1930’s. It is the perfect analogy. When I hear the so-called “Conservatives” on this blog talking about socialism and elitism, I have to ‘hurl’. What complete nonsense. They are house-slaves working for the masters.
I want a fair deal for all of us. Public Education, Public Health, National subsidized insurance programs, public transportation that works. I have a huge list of things that would make our life here a paradise. Just the fact that I believe it should be illegal to take jobs away from Americans just to increase profits; makes me a dangerous radical. I believe that no company has a right to use tax-payer money to set up their business, and then get to charge the same tax-payers exorbitant charges and fees to use the service they, the tax-payer, paid for.
I could go on, the corporations now have unlimited power to strip this country bare in the pursuit of their elevation over their fellow citizens.
Listen to what the “Conservatives” are really saying. They want to do away with anything that benefits the working man. They want to outlaw unions, eliminate social security, eliminate the minimum wage, eliminate any notion of “public” anything.
Maybe those supporting the rich over the rest of us think they will get to share the mansion with the master, but in the end they will be lucky to sit in the front of the bus on the way to Auschwitz.

“The important thing is for everyone not to jump to conclusions,” said retired Gen. Wesley Clark on CNN the night of the shootings.

“We cannot jump to conclusions,” said CNN’s Jane Velez-Mitchell that same evening. “We have to make sure that we do not jump to any conclusions whatsoever.”

Mitch

January 10, 2011 at 9:27 am

9:22,

I think it would be a nice gesture if Heraldo took down the No Arkleyville sign on the blog. A “No Marina Center” icon would be more appropriate.

Having said that, I wonder how local conservatives would have reacted if Heraldo had run an icon a bit closer to that which Sarah Palin used — you know, the kind with “surveyor crosshairs.”

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 9:33 am

From the sites that Rose links, it’s obvious that she reads nothing but frightwing blogs to reinforce her narrow view. No wonder she is so incredibly clueness despite having a computer and access to the internet. No matter how many times you demonstrate to her that her sources are liars, she keeps using them.

Goldie

January 10, 2011 at 9:35 am

A cultural divide is being fostered. We have a nation living from two different fact bases. Inflammatory comments can provoke those on the extremes of either side. It takes only one person with an extreme point of view firing a gun to create havoc, grief and further the divide.
More influential than laws are the traditions we live by and the culture we embrace, our common sanity and our quality of communication.
Rose cares a great deal about the safety of our community and so does Plane Jane. They have commonalities and they have differences.
Funerals are being planned in Arizona. People are waking up and making coffee and looking at only one cup instead of two and their homes ache in the missing movement of family members lying in a morgue. A gun man has taken lives.
Each post is a step away or a step toward violence. Tiny steps all choosing a direction.
For myself, I do not wish to support or feed the momentum of the divide. I do not know that it will change anything. I do not know how to stop Fox News or politicians who use semi-veiled encouragements of violent action. I don’t know how to make it go away but I do not wish to add to it.

My only comment: The senseless killing of those people in Arizona could have brought this nation together. It should have brought this nation together. Instead, we are just getting more polarized.

That is almost as tragic as those bodies removed from that shopping center.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 9:51 am

And there she goes again, posting MALKIN as a source. WTF is wrong with this woman? That she can’t recognize that the Washington Examiner is nothing but a free frightwing rag and its online version just a blog is further evidence of her idiocy. But maybe she has it confused with the mainstream Washington Post and the looney Moonie Washington Times.

Continuing to post “proof” of one’s point gets us nowhere. As Goldie pointed out this morning, we live from different fact bases. I’d expand on that: we are less and less interested in the facts offered by others, because we don’t believe them.

I’d suggest that people might find it worthwhile to post their feelings, so that we might at least try to understand where others are coming from.

We can agree that there is vitriol in the air without needing to decide whether it comes primarily from the right or the left — we all have our opinions about the source and are unlikely to convince others who do not already agree with us.

We can also agree that Ms. Giffords should not have been shot, I hope, and that some of us, at least, believe the vitriol has created the climate for the shooting.

So what can be done about the vitriol?

Goldie

January 10, 2011 at 10:06 am

What might it look like if we did speak to the coming together? I think we have in many ways. There is sadness that is not spoken but seen. There is concern and politeness in the ways we do come together. We do mingle among each other.
The comment section can hold simple concerns and opinions. We all have concerns. When we speak from the talking points of either side it is not the most honest form of communication. It reminds me of overly processed foods. Manufactured and mass marketed.

Big Al

January 10, 2011 at 10:08 am

If this country had universal health care maybe this guy’s problem could have been identified earlier and he might have received the help he needed.

this guy was a kook I think we all agree.

People can say hateful things and wish all kinds of evil on a person but to act on those things we all agree “is crazy” but Mr. Crazy Guy did not live in a vacuum, he was exposed to the world just as we are.

As evidence that the Washington Times is nothing but frightwing, see the link Rose posted from the Washington Times EDITOR asking the question (which Rose interpreted as a statement) “IS DAILY KOS INVOLVED IN ARIZONA MURDERS?” which of course in answered in the negative in the body of the post (not article as they claimed) they copied from Kos which contains their “suspect’s” diary in which he says he was married, is a veteran and partially paralysed; obviously not Loughner, but neither they nor Rose could resist deceitfully pretending they actually believed their own question had merit. It’s truly appalling. I have no respect for Rose or her opinions because they are based, at the very least, on willful self delusion and at worst on deliberate lies.

So what does this all mean? Is Keith Olberman and Nancy Pelosi now responsible for the shooting?

No, what it means is that this topic & Heraldo himself are looney.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 10:21 am

A BLOG claims a classmate describes him as left and that’s all it takes for HiFi. No wonder this country is so fucked up. How do you even know this classmate even knew him? How do you know this classmate isn’t a right wing whack job trying to divert blame? You DON’T. WHY IN THE HELL would a leftist kill a Democrat who voted for health care reform? There is no doubt that Giffords was his target since he walked directly up to her and fired at point blank range. The vast majority of what we know of his views is Libertarian, so now HiFi claims Libertarians aren’t right wing. This would be funny if it weren’t so indicative of how ignorant the right wingers are.

High Finance

January 10, 2011 at 10:40 am

Whatever PJ. But the newspaper has confirmed they were classmates at Mountain View High School in Tucson and that both attended Pima Community College.

But my point seems to have escaped you AGAIN. Keith Olberman or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Pres Obama are not responsible for the shooting.

Loughner is. The claims made by you & others otherwise is nothing more than hate speech & stupid to boot.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 10:49 am

That doesn’t mean that any of his classmates knew where his views fell on the political spectrum, HiFi. It’s quite possible that, like YOU, they don’t even know what Libertarians believe in. How politically astute are junior college students?

The people who have been screaming FIRE nonstop for several years now have to take some responsibility for the panic their rants have generated. The right is all about people taking responsibility, unless it is them who are responsible.

tra

January 10, 2011 at 11:08 am

Given Loughner’s ravings about the gold standard, along with his belief in government “mind control” conspiracy, I wonder whether they’ll turn up any links to or contact with the LaRouche “movement.”

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 11:19 am

Ah yes, Lyndon LaRouche, another lefty! :P

skippy

January 10, 2011 at 11:29 am

It’s a wonderful time in our ‘lil corner of the woods when passionately diverse interests meet together here. The opinions are all over but share a common thread– we care deeply. Reminded 6 lives were lost; better knowing you and our community are well. More or less.

If you didn’t notice, Plain Jane was up very early this morning after a long day yesterday (liked Krugman’s link at 5:09!); Hench made some sharply cogent (yes, the word is gently overused, Hench) posts; Mitch @ 8:18 gave us some Beck (which isn’t stomached so early on but this was smartly illuminating); Hi-Fi finally weighed in with common sense; Rose, always the contrasting POV and enjoyable read for open minds only; Tra, consistently adding food for thought; Tapperass, Moviedad, and especially Goldie, hitting the nail on the head about divisiveness.

265 posts. Enjoyed every one. Heraldo’s off to a bang for 2011.

In a perfect world perhaps he’d host a HH masquerade party for all– but I’m afraid the cream pies and seltzer water would get out of hand.

High Finance

January 10, 2011 at 11:34 am

I’ll wear my Hillary mask to your Masquerade party Skippy, unless you think that would be too scary!

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 11:39 am

Skippy sounds like he’s running for president of the Herald.

Carol

January 10, 2011 at 11:44 am

“The Glock was the weapon used to open fire on Giffords and the crowd waiting to meet with her on Saturday, according to the FBI. The six killed included US District Court Judge John Roll and a nine-year old girl, Christina Taylor Green, who was born Sept. 11, 2001.”

~From The Christian Science Monitor

Carol

January 10, 2011 at 11:46 am

I can always count on The Christian Science Monitor for sane journalism:

To the question: “What can be done about the vitriol?” I think the first step is looking to where the vitriol comes from…Our political system is broken. As a nation, we are floundering. People are afraid for their futures. We are a nation growing increasingly polarized, and we are segregating those who may have differing views because it seems THEY are responsible for the mess we are in.

Political campaigns are capitalizing on this fear and unrest. It is ironic (and all too common) that the politicians stirring up popular dissent are themselves entrenched is the same flawed system that has carried us to this most recent tragedy. Contrary to how some may frame it, this is not a partisan issue. The Democrat/Republican/Libertarian parties each helped to pull the trigger (although their roles may have varied by degree). We must admit that the problem is systemic and true change is not going to come from the same system that brought us to this day.

If we are to see a just and equitable world, we must do away with a political system that maintains the majority of this world’s wealth/power in the hands of so few. But before that is possible, we must each address our sense of individual entitlement and go about our days keeping in mind how our actions affect the world beyond our selves.

But maybe that is beyond our capabilities as species.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 11:55 am

On the other hand, maybe we should go this route: Free guns for every one!

We on the left blame those on the right for their Glenn Becks and we are correct to do so.

When we on the left attack as racist Arizonans who seek to enforce the federal laws that the federal government refuses to enforce, we think that is perfectly reasonable.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 12:04 pm

If someone had shot a republican instead of a democrat, would all of us be singing the same tune we are singing now?

owltotem

January 10, 2011 at 12:08 pm

Mitch, For each instance the solution would be different. To find commonground locally how about build a park, 100% volunteer, everything donated, no tax money, engage the teappatriots, environmentally responsible engage the enviros, engage the Chamber of Commerce, the Jefferson School crew, the military recruiters, the veterans for peace, the bravo company, cook food together, have music. Build something that will out last issues that divide, build something for the community,commonground.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 12:14 pm

“Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer ended his broadcast with a lament about the power of the Internet in a “dangerous hair-trigger time.”

“We scream and shout, hurl charges without proof. Those on the other side of the argument become not opponents but enemies. Dangerous, inflammatory words are used with no thought of consequence. All is fair if it makes the point,” he said.

Goldie

January 10, 2011 at 12:17 pm

“If someone had shot a republican instead of a democrat, would all of us be singing the same tune we are singing now?”

Are you simply your political views? This sort of framing is sad. When a plane goes down they do not list the victims as 34 Democrats, 34 Republicans and 14 Independents were lost.

tra

January 10, 2011 at 12:19 pm

From what we know so far, Loughner’s political idoeology/worldview doesn’t seem to fall neatly into the categories of liberal or conservative. However, from what I’ve seen so far, his current beliefs as reflected in his Youtube, Myspace, and Facebook content do seem to contain more ideas drawn from the far right than from the left — for example his obsession with the Gold Standard and his virulent opposition to abortion (I’m not going to give him the title “pro-life” for obvious reasons). Still, it’s hard to form any solid conclusions given how incoherent and cryptic many of his writing are.

I agree with those who have pointed out that many of his beliefs/concerns about the government could be described as seemingly arising from a particularly paranoid variety of fringe libertarianism.

I think it’s safe to say that it’s going to be a while before it becomes clear exactly what this guy’s political views are, and what role those views may have played in his motive for the act mass murder.

The one thing that IS clear is that this guy is not playing with a full deck. As far as the interaction between Loughner’s derangement, and his ideology, and how they may have combined to produce this attack, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center put it this way:

“At this early stage, I think Loughner is probably best described as a mentally ill or unstable person who was influenced by the rhetoric and demonizing propaganda around him,” Potok writes. “Ideology may not explain why he allegedly killed, but it could help explain how he selected his target.”

I agree that this is not a partisan issue, but speaking to the issues of insanity and vitriol, Glenn Beck is unarguably one of the most dangerous personalities in America. I cannot think of anyone else (left or right) that preaches fear so loudly. It is absurdly frightening how well he plays/preys on emotional insecurity.

Colorblind Justice

January 10, 2011 at 12:35 pm

With Jared Loughner’s left-leaning extremism and a high propensity of having voted for Obama, should those who voted for Obama be locked up as a precaution?

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 12:38 pm

How can you have any sort of political debate with people who know absolutely nothing about various political ideologies and refuse to educate themselves?

Incredibly, those shitweasels even celebrated the killing of the nine-year-old girl.

“That child was not innocent,” the group said in a press release. “This is a nation of depraved perverts who pass their children through the fire of their rage against God & all-consuming lust. From the womb, she was taught to hate God & mock His servants. That child is better off dead, so the cup of her iniquity will not overflow!”

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 12:59 pm

They didn’t support their claim that ANY leftist, not one or many, attacked the child’s parents. An AOL writer whose political views aren’t apparent questions why parents who had just lost their child would appear on TV and then admits that it isn’t fair. Just more hyperbole from an admitted conspiracy site that also, btw, has ads for gold. That Anon reads and uses Prison Planet for a source is telling. Not surprising that he, like Rose, just reads headlines and assumes they are supported by the actual text rather than, as if often the case, demonstrates that the headline is just attention grabbing lies.

Sources say: the kid never had a chance… Randy Loughner (the father?) is a complete bastard who created a monster… and the mother was completely dominated too. That man hated women.

Guess that’d be Palin’s fault too, eh, heraldo? And “Jane” I can see why you have to remain anonymous. What happens when you go off on a rant?

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 1:55 pm

I say GFY, Rose. Haven’t you noticed? I remain anonymous to protect myself from stalkers like you. Since you claimed Loughner stalked Giffords because he went to one of her corner events and kept the letter she wrote thanking him for attendance, what does that make someone like you vis-a-vis Gallegos? Now GFY, Rose.

Not A Native

January 10, 2011 at 2:33 pm

I dunno, but this Loughner guy doesn’t sound so different from that sign trashing volunteer for Bass or the guy foaming at the mouth about the Lovelace endorsement for the CCC. With a little public encouragement, an acute personal rejection, and ready armament, I wouldn’t put this sort of thing past them.

Lots of sketchy borderline whackos abound. But it seems like only the ones on the Right(bitter antigovernment reactionaries) realize their ideas with violent actions. Maybe its part of what the Right proudly claims to be their unique virtue, an ability to plan, organize, and “get things done”.

In my lifetime at least, all the political assassinations have been against liberals(Democrats). Violence by Left is mainly directed against property, not people. One guy did do an attempt on Reagan and that resulted in the Brady law.

What preventative measures,(besides more guns and guards) are being talked about now? What is it about limiting access to powerful and easy to use guns thats so difficult for the Right to accept, until one of their own is a victim? Without access to powerful and easy to use guns, Loughner would be just another ranter, exercising his first amendment rights.

skippy

January 10, 2011 at 2:52 pm

Plain Jane: Ouch! HiFi, good idea of the ‘alter-ego’ moniker masquerade party… a horse of a different color. Splendid! Hillary would be a dandy. Me? Shemp. You, Jane?

Hope there’s enough pies and seltzer water. N’yuck, N’yuck, N’yuck.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 3:12 pm

I didn’t mean that as an insult, Skippy. It’s just that agreeing with everyone regardless of their stated views reminds me of someone running for office, trying to please everyone.

I’ll be Richard Nixon.

skippy

January 10, 2011 at 3:13 pm

And more n’yucks to those at the Mirror making fun of us. Looks like they linked to the topic of this site, alright, with their 41 whopping posts. Yowza, there’s some numbers puttng a kibosh on this party.

Putting targets on a national map to designate states you want to win isn’t the same as putting targets on districts, naming the people who are targeted and then saying, “Don’t retreat – reload.” Although such distinctions just fly over the heads of idiots like Anon. And it certainly doesn’t say anything about “2nd Amendment remedies or shoot an automatic rifle to defeat Giffords. And then there is all the insanity from the right wing broadcasting network.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 3:59 pm

This polarized atmosphere of hatred in America that denies our common humanity is like what led to the bloody Civil War. It is about people of all stripes taking unyielding extremist positions and demonizing everyone who doesn’t agree with them. We must stop frothing at the mouth and calling for Armageddon.

robash141

January 10, 2011 at 4:05 pm

I think the rights furious denials have a lot more to do with guilty conscience than any genuine sense of being wronged

Sorry Robash, but you wouldn’t know how “the right” thinks about breakfast cereal much less about weighty issues of the day. You see, your extreme prejudice does not allow you to form an intelligent decision about anything we say or do.

Our “furious denials” are more a reaction to the disgust we feel with your types attempts to politicise this tragedy.

Shame on you.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 4:20 pm

My score indicates a person who believes strongly in individual liberty and economic justice, HiFi. I’m actually very close to the Dalai Lama on the graph in the libertarian left while you are closer to fascism and the neo cons on the authoritarian right. No surprise there.

Anon

January 10, 2011 at 4:34 pm

What I don’t like about this thread is how Heraldo got caught up in the contrived nature of tieing this guy to the Tea Party ….at any cost.

It just isn’t there. In fact just the opposite.

I can see how the artice was posted, we all felt bad as the pictures of the little girl were posted. It was horrible.

The Herald has an important place in this community and I hate to see H lose his objective reputation (and yes he is objective in that he will post submissions from the right and doesn’t edit their comments despite his own personal leanings)

This is simple to correct, but H needs to come clean about getting caught up in the Move On talking points and appologize to the local Tea Party members of this community for the linkage he ended his article with.

This guy was stalking this congresswoman for two three years prior to the Tea Party and a full year prior to anyone even know Palin’s name.

This was a satan worshipping nutball who was crazy and is no more linked to the tea party than, as you libs remind us constantly, the 19 Saudi hijackers were associated to the peace loving religion of Islam.

This was over the top and had just the opposite effect H was going for.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 4:39 pm

Where did you get the information that he was stalking Gibbons, Anon? You rightists keep trying to divert the blame with lies, justifying violent rhetoric with false equivalencey and changing the political ideology of this guy but you aren’t making your case. One doesn’t have to be a TeaPartier to be affected by their hate speech or to watch Glenn Beck. There are people a lot further to the right than the TP, believe it or not.

Mitch

January 10, 2011 at 4:47 pm

-6.62, -5.95

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 4:49 pm

Plain Jane, answer me this: Who is Gibbons?

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 4:55 pm

I’d bet the small difference in our scores is due to the strength of belief rather than much difference in views, Mitch.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 4:56 pm

Sorry, 4:49. Of course I meant Giffords. But you knew that. It’s been a long day of work and posting and I’m getting a little punchy. So don’t take advantage.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 5:08 pm

I also heard there were threats and that there was stalker behavior. Hateful lefties flexing their muscles here and blaming an entire party for one person’s insanity.

Plain Jane

January 10, 2011 at 5:21 pm

Notice how all the righties keep ignoring all the posts about Beck and the right wing media and focus solely on the TP and Palin? Why do you suppose that is?

I haven’t read anything about him stalking her or making threats against her. He attended an event, apparently asked a question of her and kept the letter she sent thanking him for attending the event. How people who can’t get from the right wing crazy talk from the right inciting nuts to take it seriously but go directly to him being a stalker because he attended one campaign event is a mystery. Must be a wiring problem.

suzy blah blah

January 10, 2011 at 5:22 pm

Wow! that’s a really neat test. Thanks for the cewl link.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 5:27 pm

I used to hate Republicans. Then I realized my own mother was one. I still hate Glenn Beck and the religious Right. But I love my mother. Have I betrayed my friends in the Democratic Party?

ChumBolly

January 10, 2011 at 5:32 pm

Yeah, how dare you politicize the attack of a politician holding a political event and make it political???!!!!

Sadly, this is the sort of ignorance that comes from the teabaggers and their supporters.

“Why is everyone looking at us? We only brought guns to political rallies with carefully worded signs warning of violence if we didn’t get our way!”

Willful ignorance mixed with that slimy ooze that creeps out of the mouths of the likes of Palin, Bachmann, Beck and the drug-addled Limbaugh leads to this — violence.

The right wing in this country is an abettor of domestic terrorists and the evidence is overwhelming. This is just the latest outrage from a political and social wing of anger, viciousness and rank imbecility that puts the know-nothings to shame.

have the courage of your convictions, Jane – c’mon, you can do it. Be brave.

http://thechollajumps.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/jared-loughner-is-a-product-of-sheriff-dupniks-office/This was not an act of politics. This was an act of a mentally disturbed young man hell bent on getting his 15 minutes of infamy. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department was aware of his violent nature and they failed to act appropriately. This tragedy leads right back to Sherriff Dupnik and all the spin in the world is not going to change that fact. or maybe the Sheriff did his job and they have a crappy DA there too.

Heraldo owes an apology for the premise of this post – bigtime.

robash141

January 10, 2011 at 7:03 pm

High Finance @ 4:15 I know what the right thinks because they blast it out on hundreds of TV and radio stations 24/7/365 . They also have publishing houses that are devoted to nothing but publishing writing by right wing ideologues. A whole TV network devoted to delivering their cant Even when I was in San Francisco tooling around the AM dial I was still able to get Rush Limbaugh on four different stations. So I’d have to say contrary to popular mythology far right partisans in the media are nearly ubiquitous Even when I don’t want to know or care what the right thinks ,it’s kind of hard to avoid hearing that stuff.
No your spluttering semi hysterical denunciations are far more telling than anything you say.

On Sunday, federal prosecutors charged 22-year-old Loughner with one count of attempting to assassinate a member of Congress, two counts of unlawfully killing a federal employee, and two counts of attempting to kill a federal employee. Giffords was the target of Loughner’s rampage, prosecutors say, and the sworn affidavit accompanying the charges mentions that Loughner attended a Giffords “Congress in Your Corner” event in 2007. The affidavit also mentions that police searching a safe in Loughner’s home found a letter from Giffords’ office thanking the alleged shooter for attending an August 25, 2007 event.*

Tierney, who’s also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He’s unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner “might have gone to some other rallies,” he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: “He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, ‘What is government if words have no meaning?'”

“He said, ‘Can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question.’ Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her.”
Giffords’ answer, whatever it was, didn’t satisfy Loughner. “He said, ‘Can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question,’ and I told him, ‘Dude, no one’s going to answer that,'” Tierney recalls. “Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her.”

Tierney says he has “no clue” why Loughner might have “shot all those other people.” But, he notes, “when I heard Gabrielle Giffords has been shot, I was like ‘Oh my God…’ For some reason I felt like I knew…I felt like if anyone was going to shoot her, it would be Jared.”

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 7:12 pm

Don’t try to figure out a person like this. They can’t even figure themselves out.

Random Guy

January 10, 2011 at 7:53 pm

qualudoobians believe in scooby doo and rastafuckians do the watoosi underwater, while far diagonal ubertubers practice farzabarzadarzawarza. It’s all about finding a loopy doopy scoopy about who belongs to the least exorcistic mandalabras surrounding proletaritits to conjure ELVIS.

This thread is the last nail in the herald’s coffin for me.

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 8:07 pm

Don’t try to figure out random drinking guy either.

Anon2

January 10, 2011 at 8:15 pm

The civil question has been asked by several conservatives, where is the beef ?

There is none. This is just more hate speech by partisan left wingers who have nothing for their side so must smear conservatives within moronic nonsense they can.

And Heraldo, you know nothing about conservatives. There are not “hundreds of TV & radio stations” that you listen too, you are a liar if you claim to listen to even one. What you do listen to are idiots like keith olberman, chris mathews and their lies about what conservatives say. While you got Rush on “four stations” (another lie) you didn’t even listen to him on one did you ?

It’s possible that the reason for the such vehement right wing denial is that people all across the country are blaming the violent rhetoric from the right for this tragedy. Anon2 seems to be laboring under the impression that leftists don’t listen to right wing media to keep track of what they are up to. Nothing keeps me awake on a long drive better than pointing out the fallacies in their arguments and, unfortunately, frightwing radio is about all you can get out in the boonies. Explains a lot, actually.

robash141

January 10, 2011 at 9:38 pm

“Nothing to see here folks just move along”..Smacks of desperation ‘
No one disputes that he was nuts The question is what set him off what changed him from an ordinary everyday crazy person into a mass murder. I’d say given the charged Political atmosphere in AZ and the preponderance of inflammatory rhetoric by right wing media figures

Anonymous

January 10, 2011 at 9:38 pm

Ninety out of every 100 U.S. citizens own at least one firearm. Private ownership of firearms is an American tradition turned into a political football by the same political party that has been using private gun ownership to intimidate political opposition. Politicizing gun ownership ties the hands of legislators who would enact laws to curb deadly violence. Its way past time to enact sane legislation concerning handguns. Make it illegal to own one. Don’t stop at outlawing clips that hold thirty rounds of ammunition but ban private ownership of handguns. Its time to put the NRA and the armed anti-government private militia crazies on notice: Threats of violence against private citizens and their elected representatives will no longer be tolerated. The idea that revolution is good for democracy is out-dated and we need to close the door on that kind of participation.

snoopy

January 10, 2011 at 9:38 pm

Blame like revenge and anger do no good. People have to learn from mistakes not have their noses rubbed in them. None of us is so pure that we can cast the first stone. A little humility is in order. Humboldt needs to get off its “in your face” accusations.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 10, 2011 at 9:48 pm

“For novelist J.D. Salinger, for all of us, the sad truth of this nonfiction life is that The Law Of Unintended Consequences enforces itself in our world where we walk the streets with assassins.”

Ain’t that the truth.

JL

skippy

January 10, 2011 at 9:52 pm

Plain Jane, ‘ouch’ didn’t refer to me, it was you and dearest Rose. No insult was taken. I don’t always agree with another, either. I simply don’t argue, yell, rant, belittle, or use potty-mouthed language engaging with difficult others. This comes from years of successful and professional experience. Different people have their different opinions; I keep an open and level head with all.

The view outside my AZ hotel includes a billboard that displays a heart containing the phrase “Guns Save Lives.”

tra

January 11, 2011 at 1:03 am

“The Westboro Church is now liberal, Tra?”

Did I say they were? Okay I’ll save you some time: No, I never said anything even remotely like that.

Perhaps you were being sarcastic?

Ponder z

January 11, 2011 at 6:24 am

So this shooter turns out to be educated in a school organized by Bill Ayers and funded by Obama (before election). This is a school of leftist thinking and propaganda (communism). It looks like this is the thought that lead to the destructive consequences. Not some Palin web page or the Tea Party.

Appolagy accepted! Fucktards!

Anon

January 11, 2011 at 6:54 am

Even the British liberal press has called this contrived outrage for what it is. Unfortunately, this filters down to our local blogs. At least now we won’t have to “wait for evidence” the next time someone named Mohamad shoots up an army base. We can just make things up to fit our agenda.

How America’s elite hijacked a massacre to take revenge on Sarah Palin

Didn’t mean to confuse you, Tra. I was just taking it to its illogical conclusion before the righties did.

For Ponder Z: Contrary to what World Nut Daily says, or where ever you latched onto the fabrication they are pimping, neither Ayers nor Obama funded any schools. They were board members of the Chicago Annenberg Foundation, funded by the Annenburgs, CONSERVATIVES, close personal friends of Ronald Reagan, he – former ambassador to Britain, she – Chief of State Dept Protocol in REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATIONS.

It should also be noted that WND is the “news” site that pushed the birther hoax and deliberately mistranslated foreign interviews to support their lies and the home of Jerome Corsi, the swiftboat hoax creator.

All of this makes clear that righties don’t need Fox to get their daily dose of hate. When the MSM doesn’t incite them with lies and exaggerations, they’ll go to World Nut Daily, Washington Examiner and Prison Planet (FFS!!!) to get their fix. They are all part of the echo chamber controlled, in the end, by a few ultra rich people who care nothing for this country but only consolidating their own wealth and power and they will use any tool available, including propaganda to incite violence while they sit in their mansions and chuckle at their success.

Mitch

January 11, 2011 at 7:02 am

Ponder z’s comment at 6:24 is perhaps the saddest comment of a challenging field.

Apparently a web site called “World Net Daily” has discovered that Jared Loughner’s high school, Mountain View High School, received some funding from a program called the Small Schools Project. This program was helped along by Bill Ayers. Here’s a link to World Net Daily:

Ponder z says:
January 11, 2011 at 6:24 am
So this shooter turns out to be educated in a school organized by Bill Ayers and funded by Obama (before election). This is a school of leftist thinking and propaganda (communism). It looks like this is the thought that lead to the destructive consequences. Not some Palin web page or the Tea Party.

Appolagy accepted! Fucktards!

Response: Hmmm, I have not seen the facts, but based on common sense,

when a money chain is involved, either by direct depository or some third party transfer through a network of organizations to cover-up the major players at the top of the pyramid scheme involved in the indoctrination agenda via education, we must all understand by now that the whole collegiate education system is an indoctrination structure on a mass scale by many individual educators who promote their own philisophical rationals and agenda taintings within their teachings that partially or in whole deviate away from historical facts to redefine, through “learned” brainwashing techniques, that history should be changed into something that is not history, but contrived sabatoge of truth and fact to steer human beings into a direction of lifestyles that fits the agenda(s) of those who are connected to its VERY POLITICAL persuasive, brainwashing teachings.

Sarcastically – Too bad the student base could not know up front in the name and title of the institution whether it was liberal, conservative or anywhere in between or off to the edges like fascist, socialist, communist, marxist, sectarianists, etc…. then at least we know each institution is a different set of whackos who will feel confortable with each other in class and the professors won’t need to feel threatened by teaching their bull pucky to non mugwumps.

JL

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 11, 2011 at 8:27 am

Ponder z says:
January 11, 2011 at 6:24 am
So this shooter turns out to be educated in a school organized by Bill Ayers and funded by Obama (before election). This is a school of leftist thinking and propaganda (communism). It looks like this is the thought that lead to the destructive consequences. Not some Palin web page or the Tea Party.

Appolagy accepted! Fucktards!

Response: Hmmm, I have not seen the facts, but based on common sense,

when a money chain is involved, either by direct depository or some third party transfer through a network of organizations to cover-up the major players at the top of the pyramid scheme involved in the indoctrination agenda via education, we must all understand by now that the whole collegiate education system is an indoctrination structure on a mass scale by many individual educators who promote their own philisophical rationals and agenda taintings within their teachings that partially or in whole deviate away from historical facts to redefine, through “learned” brainwashing techniques, that history should be changed into something that is not history, but contrived sabatoge of truth and fact to steer human beings into a direction of lifestyles that fits the agenda(s) of those who are connected to its VERY POLITICAL persuasive, brainwashing teachings.

Sarcastically – Too bad the student base could not know up front in the name and title of the institution whether it was liberal, conservative or anywhere in between or off to the edges like fascist, socialist, communist, marxist, sectarianists, etc…. then at least we know each institution is a different set of whackos who will feel confortable with each other in class and the professors won’t need to feel threatened by teaching their bull pucky to non mugwumps.

JL

Goldie

January 11, 2011 at 8:41 am

Can hate speech be stopped? Can arguments, discussions, debates or even that odd creature known as facts bring conclusion when folks are dug into a to certain set of beliefs or opinions?
An article by George Lakoff points out that the logic on the right is a closed system. Using the national deficit as an expample he explains:
” it does absolutely no good to point out that it was President Bush who created the deficit, presided over the economic crash that led to the Great Recession, put two wars and multi-trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich on the credit card, etc etc They don’t care about such indisputable facts–they instead go back to the conservative trope “don’t blame Bush” and act like it’s liberals who are being smarmy simply for pointing these facts out. They will never admit that their guy literally led the country to the brink of economic collapse! No, it is liberals who are wrong for blaming Bush. Why?
Because the really bad thing in the conservative system is to question conservative assumptions themselves. Yes, Bush led the world to elective wars and economic ruin, and the country into massive debt, but he stood for freedom, free markets and fundamentalism–so how could he have been wrong?
Their logic is circular and it is closed system.”
When you choose to enter a circular conversation with someone who says up is down or cross hairs on a map is a cozy and warm symbol, you go in circles.

Anon

January 11, 2011 at 8:42 am

Well, this thread will certainly increase concealed carry permits in the county. Appartently there are crazy pot smoking lefty satan worshipers out there shooting up parking lots.

Probably listens to Ed Schultz. We don’t need any proof of it, we can just assume.

Great thread.

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 8:48 am

Good find, Goldie. Too bad there isn’t a drug to cure circular logic disorder, it is rampant. Religiously minded people seem to be the most susceptible, maybe because their faith requires them to be adept.

Lakoff? Hilarious! George Lakoff’s entire premise is to persuade you to willingly accept the yoke of government – his entire premise is to convince you to like something that even you know is inherently wrong – the proverbial “pissing on your leg and telling you it is raining” – for example, he recommends that you FRAME the debate on taxes that taxes are not bad, they are an “investment.” And if the government needs it then you should give it up – so let’s see you live up to your Lakoff preachings… if you’re a grower, hand over 50% of your “earnings.”

She knows taxes are evil and investments are good so Lakoff’s advice to “frame” the debate that taxes are an investment in our country is “pissing on your leg.”

What’s sad about it is that she doesn’t know her opinions have been framed for decades by Lakoff’s alter egos on the right, feeding talking points to the right wing echo chamber to thoroughly brainwash people to work against their own best interests.

Thank you, Goldie – now let’s hear an admission – no one here cared one iota when you had a man who posted bomb-making instructions, Rodney Coronado, threatening the lives of your neighbors. No one here is troubled by Bill Ayres murderous plans, in fact he is celebrated. So, all this hand-wringing over Plain Jane’s “fright-wingers” (her favorite term, it sounds so good and so impressive, kinda like saying your favorite book is Mein Kampffff) – and poor jane, who may or may not really be a female, is totally into misogynistic hate-speech. In “her”mind it is totally ok to attack Sarah Palin in any way possible, since she is an uppity female who has no right to run for any office – why, because she is not a Democrat, apparently.

Every single time one of these nutcases goes on a shooting rampage you jump to the same wrong conclusion – it has to be a right winger – and each time, it hasn’t been. Yet you do not learn.

Ayres and his group killed people. They didn’t just incite hate, they carried out their plans and they actually killed people. Environmental extremists have committed violent crimes. You say nothing. Apparently it is ok with you…

Someone shot Sarah Palin’s targets. After murdering 6 people and wounding 17 others he tried to take her advice and “reload,” but was thwarted by brave bystanders.

Apparently it’s wrong to protest the murders of Tea Party targets. If only environmentalists would murder people, then rose would have something to complain about.

Anonymous

January 11, 2011 at 9:22 am

Why can’t liberals be honest for once ? Blaming the tragedy in AZ on talk radio rhetoric & Sarah Palin is ludicrous on its face.

But there is a sinister ulterior motive in their attacks & that is pushing the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”. The long range motive is to shut down the ability of conservatives to access the national media. Our only access lies in talk radio and FOX News. Shut those down and liberals will control 100% of the national media just like they did prior to Rush Limbaugh.

Glen Beck is no conservative. He is a charleton, a showman. They used to sell snake oil medicine in tents at shows. Beck doesn’t believe any of what he says, he is just making money.

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 9:29 am

And there she goes again!

1. When did Goldie have a man posting bomb making instructions?
2. No one I know celebrates Bill Ayers or his terrorism.
3. Frightwingers are right wingers who use fear to advance their agenda.
4. Criticizing a politician IN SPITE of their being a female is not misogynistic hate-speech, it is not discriminatory. I criticize all idiots regardless of their sex. Expecting a political candidate to get a pass for being an idiot because she is a female (what do you expect from a woman) is misogynistic. Is Rose a misogynistic hater because she opposed Boxer? I have never said a bad word about Olympia Snow or Susan Collins, both Republicans.
6. Since the internet didn’t exist back when Ayers was a terrorist, how could Rose possibly know what we said or that it is okay with us? She builds these crazy strawmen incessantly.

skippy

January 11, 2011 at 9:30 am

Our Democratic climate is changing. Updates today (9:30 PST):

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) proposes a 10 percent increase to cover more security measures in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) intends to reintroduce legislation this week that would enclose the House Gallery with a protective Plexiglas case to prevent members of the public from throwing explosive devices onto the House floor.

Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) has proposed “an A to Z” review of the Capitol Police and its security processes.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he will back legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official.

Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance Gainer says that Congress members who want to carry weapons in the wake of the shooting should reconsider.

A day before the Tucson rampage, the FBI said in court that a Colorado man made repeated death threats against staff members of Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. The man claimed, “I’m a schizophrenic and I need help.”

Tea Party Express founder Amy Kremer is outraged at what she calls the politicizing of the tragedy: “I think the whole thing is absurd. We need to stop the rhetoric now… anything can set off an unstable person—whether it’s road rage or someone going into a store that doesn’t have the kind of beer he wants. Most of these people trying to put blame somewhere … and have no idea what his motives were.”

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 9:46 am

Why would a Fairness Doctrine shut down Fox, 9:22? Don’t they already claim to be “fair and balanced?” What is wrong with equal time on NEWS programs? Why does the right so fear other views being given equal time?

Beck is a dangerous clown. If his viewers knew he didn’t believe what he tells them, they wouldn’t watch and parrot his propaganda as if it were the truth. He spews his hate over the very people most likely to seek 2nd amendment “remedies” and then denies any guilt when they act. There isn’t a single politician or pundit from the left whose hateful rhetoric comes even close to the mainstream right hate from Fox, its pundits and the GOP and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. Comparing a private homeowners halloween decoration of Palin hanging in effigy (or even left wing terrorists supported by virtually no one on the left then or now) and the 24/7 hate spewed by the right wing media is classic false equivalence.

Goldie

January 11, 2011 at 9:57 am

Hate speech can not be legislated. It has to be the people who say No More.
Bad situations make very bad laws. I can not see this as a gun problem but as a cultural problem.

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 9:58 am

TPM has put together a guide of extreme rhetoric coming from the right wing in recent national debates. Yes, the left presents similar rhetoric, but not from figures as prominent. In other words, Sarah Palin talks this way. Bernie Sanders does not.

Sad that the King/Queen of Humboldt Heraldo Hate Blog has stooped so low. And I am not a fan of Sarah. This is a mental illness issue.

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 9:59 am

Rose – Fred Phelps is a liberal? Who knew?

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 10:05 am

Michelle Malkin complaining about someone else’s tone? That’s rich!

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 10:08 am

Again, there isn’t a SINGLE liberal politician or mainstream pundit whose rhetoric compares to the extremism on the right, both from their mainstream media and political candidates. TPM did a great job of cataloging them.

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 10:12 am

Jon Stewart does make a good point about blaming the incident on rhetoric, comparing it to blaming Columbine on music.

“You know, we live in a complex ecosystem of influences and motivations,” he added, “and I wouldn’t blame our political rhetoric any more than I would blame heavy metal music for Columbine.” He then added the disclaimer that his comments come from someone who truly hates the political environment.

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 10:17 am

I’m sure he’s right, Eric. Propaganda never works no matter how often you hear it.

I miss REAL conservatives

January 11, 2011 at 10:37 am

9:22 said: “The long range motive is to shut down the ability of conservatives to access the national media. Our only access lies in talk radio and FOX News. Shut those down and liberals will control 100% of the national media just like they did prior to Rush Limbaugh.

Glen Beck is no conservative. He is a charleton, a showman. They used to sell snake oil medicine in tents at shows. Beck doesn’t believe any of what he says, he is just making money.”

Glen Beck is the most popular of the many charletons on FOX. The Fairness in Media doctrine would require some honesty to counter the lies he spews.

9:22 exposes the fact that today’s “conservatives” need a media outlet that is not bound to fairness, truth or intelligent analysis. No fair, fact-based news network would stoop so low as to give them a platform for their lies – at least not without presenting facts to counter their unhinged views. Truth and facts are the part of the equation the “conservatives” detest.

I’m beginning to miss the conservatives I used to watch on PBS. At least they were intelligent and could hold their own in an honest debate. Limbaugh’s “conservatives” are ignorant and proud of it!

skippy

January 11, 2011 at 10:45 am

The propaganda oozes continually from the Echo Chamber, Fox News, and right wing commentators 24/7 inspiring hate, fear, and violence (and large paychecks) in the best of yellow journalism and political rhetoric. It sells. And scares.

In hindsight we could see this coming. Erik Kirk @ 9:58, outstanding link; everyone should read it. Yet this barely touches what ‘rhetoric’ spews forth every single minute in print and on the airwaves, influencing the masses and minions in opinion… or ‘news’.

Anonymous

January 11, 2011 at 10:46 am

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we will bring a gun”

Guess who said that to the national audience ?

Funny, nobody here complained about the rhetoric then. Hypocrites.

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 11:17 am

Jon Stewart, “It would be really nice if the ramblings of crazy people didn’t in any way resemble how we actually talk to each other on TV. Let’s at least make troubled individuals easier to spot.”

False equivalence, 10:46.

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 11:22 am

I seem to remember people actually being encouraged to bring guns to political events and some did. Who were they again? If someone came at me with a knife, I would hope to have a gun. Is that the same thing as implying you would like a certain person targeted? Perspective deficiency on display again.

from Move-on

January 11, 2011 at 11:22 am

While we may never know what exactly motivated the shooter in Arizona—and while there are many lessons to draw from this tragedy—one thing is clear: Our country must turn away from the culture of violent, hateful rhetoric that has been pervading our political discourse for too long.

Nearly 200,000 people have signed our “Debate, not hate” petition. It calls on politicians and the media to stop spreading hateful rhetoric and implicit appeals to violence. Can you sign the petition today?

I guess it’s sort of comparable in that the metaphor references violence. It’s hard to imagine anyone taking Obama’s metaphor literally. Not that I think anyone took Palin’s cross-hairs literally. It’s a question of the imagery which ratchets up the emotions, and taking responsibility not to play on it, and ultimately the question is whether Obama’s quote added to the intensity. Were Republicans shocked at the metaphor? I don’t recall.

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 11:30 am

One good thing that will come out of this is that mainstream Republicans may lay off the rhetoric for awhile, even if the fringe does not.

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 11:34 am

Just saw a pic of a megaphone labeled “political rhetoric” with a large ammo clip to be inserted in the handle. Don’t know how to post it.

“On Monday’s “O’Reilly Factor,” a furious Bill O’Reilly excoriated the New York Times, MSNBC and some liberal groups for exploiting the tragedy of the Arizona shooting, lying about its origins, and ignoring their own instances of extreme political rhetoric. O’Reilly condemned the shootings and what he called a “disgusting display sweeping America.” That, he said, was the exploitation of the murders for political means.

“Conservatives encouraged Jared Loughner to pull the trigger,” he said sarcastically. “Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Fox News, all spurred the psychopath to kill the six people. The merchants of hate who are peddling this stuff should be accountable.”

He then moved on to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the National Organization for Women, and MSNBC. The rival network, he said, allowed “vicious personal attacks on anyone who doesn’t toe the far-left MSNBC line. The hatred spewed on that cable network is unprecedented in the media.. I can’t tell you how angry this makes me. Far-left loons have attacked me in vile way for years. I have to have security around the clock. Has the “New York Times” ever said a word about that?”

Poor Bill. Tsk, tsk, Heraldo. Shame on us. What have we done? We should be held accountable, too.

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm

That’s a good one too, H. I wish the megaphone was plastered with those slogans rather than “political rhetoric.”

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 11, 2011 at 12:05 pm

Well,

Such instincts were correct – use a fear incident to create more power, control and non-transparencies that protect law-makers, but not equally protect its citizens. SO, why the failure of elected officials over domestic violence that voters have been voting for by majority victory ever since Reagan’s point blank plot? Each time an excuse can be reasoned, or a reason can be excused, governemt will take those attempts to distort in order to broaden its power and control.

This is why there are Tuscon nut-jobs as well – to sustain an indirect link to domestic violence so that the manipulation of such violence can be recloaked into one where the violence allows an opportunity for government to deceive its own people due to the fact that hardly an “honest” effort goes toward dealing with these mental problems that create catastrophes – lawmakers are aware of their inability to represent, but when their in power, lack of representation really has no affect short term, even mid-term. Outcomes are evidence undenyable.

JL

ChumBolly

January 11, 2011 at 12:34 pm

To answer the anonymous shitbag upthread, the traitors can be found at any gathering of modern Republicans, particularly those headlined by the likes of Palin and Beck. Traitors all.

owltotem

January 11, 2011 at 1:00 pm

Also our brothers Chumbolly, commonground. I have a childhood friend as sick a conservative as they come, I’m sure he considers me just as sick. But it is of utmost importance to me (and probably also to my friend)that we protect our friendship and allow eachother to disagree (although sometimes passionately). We find commonground, sometimes over Lasagna, sometimes splitting Firewood and sometimes over Pantera, and regardless, we respect the person behind the label or the mask or we will find ourselves on either side of the frontline and commonground will be the denial of eachothers genuine spirits.

owltotem

January 11, 2011 at 1:02 pm

Skippy, Ohhhh Nooooo not Sluggo.

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 1:22 pm

Well, they dug and dug, and finally found a quasi-prominent Democrat who said something stupid last year.

Fuck off Owl, for the past 20 years shitbag Republicans have done their utmost to gut the most important provisions contained in our laws — to protect all. I don’t give a flying fuck about your lasagna, your pig-ignorant shit-for-friend or any other pablum you type out. These people are a direct threat to the security of our nation, they are traitors and they get the respect a traitor deserves — none.

Now that their dreams of violence have been realized and they can’t stand the fucking heat. That’s why Palin is claiming to be a victim, of course she doesn’t have a bullet lodged in her skull, it wouldn’t fit anyway, what with all the straw.

So enjoy your brokeback moments with your buddy, sure enough the moment he can fuck you without consequence he will do, and it won’t cost 30 pieces of silver, just a pat on the head from the eliminationists and the jesus freaks.

robash141

January 11, 2011 at 3:02 pm

@ Eric 1:22:
I see that this guy lost his campaign for reelection ,good riddance
It appears that the voters of Florida made at least one correct choice. Hopefully that’s the end of his political career.

owltotem

January 11, 2011 at 3:12 pm

Threat>Fear>Anger>Blame>Hate

inch by inch, commonground, meet in the meddle and bring them back, it is reconnaissance.

I even love you Chumbolly, I feel your pain, you feel threatened and it makes you angry. It is OK, your feelings are valid and very powerful. Focus that energy in a positive direction, do something you believe in and please,do no unnecessary harm.

Now, I’m on Boys, got to go.

skippy

January 11, 2011 at 3:27 pm

Owl’s a good poster, we like his contributions. Chum, tell us how you really feel, put the cards on the table, c’mon, be honest.

Take the Political Correctness test! Tell us how it turns out if you have the time…?

For the late readers, here’s Plain Jane’s amusing link to the Political Correctness test again (thank you, Jane). I scored dead center, the sweet wife around the area of well, Ghandi. She’s a sweetie all right, but ain’t no Mother Theresa, either. Hi-Fi, Plain Jane, Steak ‘n Eggs, and Mitch were all across the board. And you?:

Eric, the EXACT quote you link to: “That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida,” Mr. Kanjorski said. “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he’s running for governor of Florida. He’s a millionaire and a billionaire. He’s no hero. He’s a damn crook. It’s just we don’t prosecute big crooks.”

Now we know for certain who inspired the gunman.

That and the currency nuts.

“heraldo” owes an apology. Period.

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 4:39 pm

Yes Rose. You found one.

robash141

January 11, 2011 at 4:39 pm

Rose , do you teach your children that two wrongs make a right?

Anon

January 11, 2011 at 5:23 pm

Forget it Rosie. the liberals are in a dead panic. They see it all slip slidin away and are like children stamping their feet. Have fun pushing their buttons, there isn’t anything they can do about squat anymore.

Plain Jane

January 11, 2011 at 5:31 pm

Has anyone even heard of Mr. Kanjorski? One loser candidate in Florida is all they can come up with? 24 / 8 hate coming from Fox and rant radio and they have ONE example of violent rhetoric from the left, not repeated nightly for weeks by numerous commentators, said one time by one guy. I take it all back. The hate is coming equally from both sides – in a world where having perspective is a crime.

tra

January 11, 2011 at 5:50 pm

So, I was wonderiing when this turd was going to bob back up to the surface:

Rush Limbaugh today said that Jared Loughner — the suspect in the mass shooting in Arizona — is smiling in his mugshot because he knows he has the full support of the Democratic Party behind him.

So according this ridiculous blowhard, we’re supposed to believe that the Democratic Party “fully supports” the assasination of Democratic members of Congress? Yeah, that makes perfect sense…in the right wing echo chamber.

Meanshile, out here in the real world, the only people who have actually come out in support of Loughner’s actions are right-wing “Reverend” Fred Phelps and his “God Hates Fags” Westboro Baptist Hate Church.

Anonymous

January 11, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Anonymous 9:38 pm will also, while he is confiscating all the handguns in America, command the Sun always to shine in Camelot, I hope.

skippy

January 11, 2011 at 6:48 pm

Here’s a strange sampling of contrary blog comments regarding ‘the political motivations of the shooter’ found:

“Obama, if he and the other loons weren’t trying to give amnesty to illegals, and would uphold their oaths of office which is to obey and protect the constitution and the laws of America, the incident in Arizona may not have ever happened.”

“The American Left may well have known and may have plotted.”

“Question Is? Who will the Progressives Whack next?”

“Never let a Crisis Go to Waste. Especially when the Democrats created it.”

“They need to silence obama, biden and pelosi first….they have set tone for political trash talk.”

“Personally I think the military made a mistake not enlisting him. This shooter could be a real maverick in shooting terrorists.”

“By his own admission he is a liberal nut and I don’t care what you call me.”

“Will progressives ever give up their violent extremism?”

“They say he was in the habit of babbeling incoherent gibberish, which would naturally lead one to believe he was a liberal.”

… Curiously enough, the above comments culled were from Southern states; Northern neighbors were very different in their outlook, as are HH readers.

tra

January 11, 2011 at 7:01 pm

There’s a lot of speculation about this guy’s political beliefs, but not a lot of hard facts.

But on one item that generally creates a pretty clear divide between “liberals” and “conservatives”, his beliefs are quite clear — he was virulently anti-abortion, to the point of calling a classmate a “babykiller” and comparing her to a terrorist.

The wealthy politicians and commentators of this country are traitors working against the benefit of the United States. Liberal, progressive, socially conscious people are trying to rescue it from the clutches of the greedy.

The Monitor

January 11, 2011 at 8:48 pm

This act has sure stimulated some of you to write book length tomes. You should cull your comments, put them into one document, then read them back to yourselves. Does attacking postings of different views qualify as substance, or just being disagreeable?

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 10:26 pm

rose., ayers group killed only three of their own by accident. Nobody else.

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 10:36 pm

There does appear to be some political fallout from this. It’s taken some thunder from the triumphant return of republican rule of the house. The hcr repeal vote has been postponed. Despite their protesting the republicans probably will tone down for awhile. The counterattacks have really been lame. Not sanguine about it. Just observing.

Eric Kirk

January 11, 2011 at 10:42 pm

Tra, he is also virulently federalist. Not that there aren’t left wing federalists. But most of them live in sohum.

Anon

January 12, 2011 at 5:33 am

Oh I get it now. If Fox broadcasters issue constant pro conservative messages and some crazy kills someone it is because of “hate” speech. But if some crazy person kills because of the constant MSNBC truth messages it is justified murder.

Man, you learn alot from the liberals here.

Plain Jane

January 12, 2011 at 5:50 am

Dangerous outcomes from a culture of paranoia
Harold Meyerson

“The primary problem with the political discourse of the right in today’s America isn’t that it incites violence per se. It’s that it implants and reinforces paranoid fears about the government and conservatism’s domestic adversaries.”

“Beck hosted a show that gamed out how militias in Southern and Western states might rise up against an oppressive government. The number of self-proclaimed right-wing militias tripled – from 42 to 127, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – in 2009 (and that doesn’t count those that are entirely underground).”

“Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America, who told a rally in Washington last April that, “We’re in a war. The other side knows they are at war, because they started it. They are coming for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They are coming for everything because they are a bunch of socialists.”

The right’s defense is to attack using strawmen “they are calling us mass murderers.” “The Democrats support Loughner.”

If Beck and Ericksen are spewing “pro-conservative messages,” the conservative movement is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Plain Jane

January 12, 2011 at 5:57 am

Fear Comes First
Robert Wright

“My own view is that if you decide to go kill a bunch of innocent people, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re not a picture of mental health. But that doesn’t sever the link between you and the people who inspired you, or insulate them from responsibility. Glenn Beck knows that there are lots of unbalanced people out there, and that his message reaches some of them.

This doesn’t make him morally culpable for the way these people react to things he says that are true. It doesn’t even make him responsible for the things he says that are false but that he sincerely believes are true. But it does make him responsible for things he says that are false and concocted to mislead gullible people.

I guess it’s possible that Beck actually believes his hyper-theatrically delivered nonsense. (And I guess it’s possible that professional wrestling isn’t fake.) But in that case the responsibility just moves to Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch, its owner. Why are they giving a megaphone to someone who believes crazy stuff?”

“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for.”

– Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95

“Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him.”

– Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton

“We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”

– Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”

– Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02

“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.”

– Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02

“Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past – I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble – recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.”

– John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01

“Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God’s Law and the disenfranchisement of White men.”

– State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01

Plain Jane

January 12, 2011 at 6:47 am

Right wing hate and violent rhetoric didn’t start with the Tea Party, but the “death panels” hysteria over health care reform is what created the Tea Party.

Eric Kirk

January 12, 2011 at 11:19 am

“The sooner I get out of Arizona the better. A fella could get killed around here.”

-Wyatt Earp

Plain Jane

January 12, 2011 at 11:35 am

An Arizonan Republican District Party Chairman and 3 others who have been the targets of threats from their own party members resigned out of fear of being killed.

It wasn’t the Tea Party, it wasn’t Sarah Palin or talk radio or the full moon that killed those people in Tucson.

You all act like this was the first murder in the history of the US or the world. Hint; murders have been occuring long before radio was even invented. Murderers have existed since the dawn of mankind.

Or maybe Rush caused Abraham Lincoln’s murder?

Eric Kirk

January 12, 2011 at 4:42 pm

No HF. But if Rush had been there at the time, he’d probably have minimized it, blamed it on liberals, and waxed on about how such far reaching federal government disregard for individual property rights (the property of slaves having been appropriated by the government) brought the tragedy on.

Mitch

January 12, 2011 at 4:42 pm

High Finance,

It’s difficult to think of a way to respond to you politely.

Let me just say that I sincerely believe that Fox News and the GOP bear some blame for the shootings. I am not trying to score political points. In fact, I am dumbfounded that others either do not see the connection or refuse to admit what they plainly see.

And for Ms. Palin to bring the term “blood libel” into the shooting of a Jewish Congresswoman does not make things better.

I find it all mind-boggling.

Clearly, different people have come to this with different ways of thinking, even different sets of what they believe to be facts. Maybe we should stop calling one another fools, and figure out how it might be possible for us to live together without turning the United States into the Balkans.

The Tea-Party was created and paid for by one billionaire in Texas named Koch.

Goldie

January 12, 2011 at 10:12 pm

20 years ago someone committed a crime and severely injured my son and killed another young man. I thought for a long time how this could have happened. I decided 10,000 things caused it. Some more influential than others. There is no one reason or cause for anything. How could there be?
Fox news, guns, gun laws, guns in movies, lack of guns in movies, mental illness, Obama, Elvis, dogs, sugar, computers, blogs… whatever.
What is different about this crime? It is not clear why the young man had the desire to shoot into a crowd and so we have no reason and so we thrash around making up whatever story that reflects our fears or frustrations.
At this point what you say and how you react will tell you more about you than about why this happened.

Mitch

January 13, 2011 at 6:55 am

Goldie,

I realize “sorry” on a blog from a random name doesn’t count for much, even less so after 20 years, but I’m sorry to hear that your son was severely injured.

Anononymous

January 13, 2011 at 9:19 am

Very mature wise words and common sense from Goldie.

Thanks.

Plain Jane

January 13, 2011 at 9:44 am

From Palin’s speech yesterday:

“journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”

The libel and violent rhetoric she spews does not create violence, but criticism of it does?

Bolithio

January 13, 2011 at 10:06 am

Wheres the love? Lets not focus on violence, but on the things that bring us together. This is what Palin should be remembered for:

When my son was in the hospital and we had some certainty that he might live I asked him if he wanted me to hate the person who did this and his reply was that we did not have the time or energy for that. He said he wanted to get better and that is what we should concentrate on. We learned much during that time. his recovery was 97%. He is fine now.
To me the remedy is in going the opposite direction of hate speech. Belittling posts, harshness, jabbing, name calling increases anger and frustration.
Being right does not create safety.
I deeply appreciate every post that is an attempt to simply share thoughts and concerns rather than to tear down the spirit of another.

tra

January 13, 2011 at 12:17 pm

Goldie, thank you for sharing your story with all of us. I’m glad to hear that your son made a pretty full recovery.

Anonymous

January 13, 2011 at 4:46 pm

Is Hostess really to blame for the death of Harvey Milk and George Moscone? Heraldo would lead you to believe so.

Mitch

January 13, 2011 at 5:04 pm

What 4:46 is referring to, for those who might be mystified, is the so-called “Twinkie defense” used by the man who assassinated George Moscone and Harvey Milk in San Francisco. The defense attorneys, left with little else to defend their client, blamed their client’s actions on a high-sugar diet.

No, 4:46, it’s not a clever comparison.

Mr. Loughner increasingly appears to be mentally ill and, I would suggest, not legally or morally responsible for his actions. Schizophrenia is a real and serious illness, not in the same league as excessive junk food consumption. When someone takes action because of voices in their head telling them they need to do something, it seems to me to be the utmost in cruelty to hold them legally responsible for what they’ve done. That’s not to say that the person doesn’t need to be removed from society until they can interact with the rest of us without posing a threat.

And, yes, it strikes me as a very real possibility that the statements and behavior of adults who should know better could have pushed someone who was mentally ill towards acting in the way Loughner did.

I understand that my opinion is in the minority.

Thinking

January 13, 2011 at 6:19 pm

Well mitch, did the extremely real possibility that this mentally disturbed murderer never watched Glen Beck, never visited Palin’s website & never listened to Rush Limbaugh ?

The best sign that there is some hope for the future of our country is that your opinion IS the minority. Otherwise I fear that the movie mediocracy is the future of America.

robash141

January 13, 2011 at 8:58 pm

Here’s a question all those righties who totally dismiss and disdain any suggestion that violent rhetoric leads to violent actions.
Would you have any objection to a wild eyed mullah from the Islamic Jihad coming to town to deliver a speech?
If you really believe that words in your political rhetoric don’t have any real consequence, then what’s the harm in letting the guy get up there and scream “death to America!” and whatnot?

Excellent point, Robash. In fact, doesn’t the right talk about how extremist mullahs incite violence all the time with their violent rhetoric? And if Palin believes “blood libel” of her can incite violence, as she said in her speech yesterday, how can she deny that rhetoric can cause violence?

Rose’s Coffee Shop Blog: where the fruitcake ended up after the holidays.

Mike Buettner

January 13, 2011 at 10:42 pm

That give fruit cake a bad image.

robash141

January 13, 2011 at 10:58 pm

A fruitcake vomit stain splattered down the side of a monster truck after a massive spin-out.

Night Owl

January 14, 2011 at 4:26 am

Let’s say that you are right. That “harsh” rhetoric on the radio by conservatives is responsible for the violence in society.

Then you have totally missed the bigger picture. You are going after the sympton & not the disease. Rather than ending free speech in our country, might you look inwards and try to find the cause of the rhetoric ?

This country is not a far left country. It is much more moderate than most of the people posting here. But Pres Obama and the Democrats have rammed a far left agenda through congress. The country seems to have been put on an unstoppable course of the government eventually taking over the health care industry. A big majority of the people opposed the bill but Democrats couldn’t give a rip what the people thought. And that is just one example.

When Republicans objected, The obama replied “I was elected, you were not” and “get in the back of the bus”.

When people feel powerless they get angry. You can argue whether it is a majority of the people or just an big minority but we see our society crumbling. Not just in Wash DC and Sacramento but in our culture as well.

Walt

January 14, 2011 at 6:44 am

It IS interesting that the right is now as angry as the left was in the late 60s and early 70s. The left SHOULD be angrier, but they’re on their meds. What meds does the right have, other than alcohol? Maybe there should be more ganja ads at NASCAR events.

Plain Jane

January 14, 2011 at 7:32 am

No, Owl, you are missing the point. What you call a “far left agenda” isn’t even as “left” as what Obama ran and won on. The people who are calling the insurance industry favorable health insurance reform “far left” are just repeating what they’ve been told, over and over and over. The majority of people wanted single payer or at least a public option (which is what Obama promised), but that wasn’t possible due to power of the insurance industry in congress and our feckless media (also beholden to business interests) which framed the discussion in such a way that those who were public option or single payer advocates were just counted on the “opposed” side as if we agreed with those who wanted no reform (but tort).

Regardless, the crazy and violent rhetoric is irresponsible. We don’t make or change laws in this country because people hint at civil war carry guns to political events or threaten elected officials. That’s how things work in third world countries who lack fair elections. That you falsely quoted Obama as saying, “get in the back of the bus” is a likely indicator that you get your views from right wing media rather than news organizations since he never said that. He used the metaphor of the Republicans driving the car (nation) into the ditch but still wanted to drive, but they had to sit in the back seat. An apt metaphor that the right falsely claimed was “get in the back of the bus,” deliberately equating it with some sort of racial revenge.

I am not happy with Obama’s job performance either. His lower approval ratings didn’t come from the people who didn’t vote for him, but from those who did and are disappointed that he did so little to keep the promises for which he was elected.

Night owl perfect product of right-wing hate speech. Owl you got nothing but Rush , Sarah and Glen got filthy rich by convincing you of this BS. Those people think you’re a stupid sucker for believing them .But It sure helps load their considerable bank accounts.

Anononymous

January 14, 2011 at 8:42 am

Robash is a perfect product of left-wing stupid speech. Robash, you got nothing but Democrat talking points, Olberman and Mathews got gilthy rich by convincing you of this BS. Those people think you’re a stupid sucker for believing them .But It sue helps load their considerable bank accounts.

You and your ilk will cause the downfall of this once great country.

Mitch

January 14, 2011 at 8:56 am

I agree with PJ that the Krugman column she links (at 7:39) is excellent.

Night Owl, I offer you these suggestions.

Find what you believe to be one or two non-partisan sources, and investigate SPECIFICALLY what the Obama administration has done that strikes YOU as far left. Let’s say the repeal of DADT is far left. I don’t believe it is, but that’s just me. So let’s say it’s far left. What else?

Then, use some non-partisan sources to compare the increase in government spending and in the Federal deficit under the George W Bush presidency and under the Obama presidency.

Then, compare the Obama administration’s health care reform with that proposed by the Nixon administration.

Finally, compare the bank bailout as conducted by the Bush administration and the Obama administration. What, specifically, did the Obama administration do that is worse than what the Bush administration did? Which far left economists did he put in charge? What far left things did they do?

If you like, you can fill us all in on what you find.

Thanks in advance.

Plain Jane

January 14, 2011 at 9:09 am

I would call the repeal of DADT, (which btw was an improvement over the way homosexuality was handled by the military before DADT) a nonpartisan issue since equality and civil rights was a founding principle (at least for those considered fully human at the time – excluding people of color and women) of this country.

It’s almost funny to hear someone say that supporting democrats who say (emphasis on “Say”) they want to bring back American manufacturing, and take a share of the obscene profits by criminal companies for the public needs, is somehow ‘destroying’ the country.
Hey Pal, those rip-offs you’re supporting are stealing our futures and setting up a billionaire’s paradise in Dubai. Maybe you would be happier serving your masters over there, where there wouldn’t be anything to check their unlimited power. Heck, you could offer up your children and your grandchildren’s lives for the service of wealthy. None of that pesky “notion of equality” to deal with. You sound just like a slave talking about his master; you should be very happy. Good luck.

Mitch

January 14, 2011 at 9:21 am

PJ,

Not to get too far astray, but I believe DADT codified rules which created a class of people allowed to remain in a tax-supported organization only if they, in effect, lied about their lives. I never viewed it as a step forward.

Plain Jane

January 14, 2011 at 9:50 am

I meant a step forward from the policies where people suspected of being gay were investigated and thrown out of the military, Mitch, not that it was a good policy.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 14, 2011 at 9:58 am

Joel Mielke says:
January 13, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Rose’s Coffee Shop Blog: where the fruitcake ended up after the holidays.

robash141 says:
January 13, 2011 at 10:58 pm
A fruitcake vomit stain splattered down the side of a monster truck after a massive spin-out.

Response: Wow, 3 non-honorable human beings attacking someone who is not even posting at the time. Must be infatuation with these men to hound dog a female poster not even posting. The bandwagon approach in this fashion does show some hatred and aggravated malice, kinda like how rapists choose their victims.

JL

Anonymous

January 14, 2011 at 11:56 am

The Obama administration isn’t far left? Perhaps you should investigate the spending and the deficit under Obama & Bush yourself Mr Mitch. You would be astounded and terrified at what has happened these last two years!!!!

Mitch

January 14, 2011 at 12:12 pm

11:56,

I have investigated. I do not believe the Obama administration is far left. I do believe the Bush Administration was a big spender, and I also believe the Bush administration left the current administration with a potential depression in progress.

Although I could find many locations with statistics on the Bush administration spending, here is one from the conservative Cato Institute:

11:56, do you think Obama kept his campaign promises? If not, do you think he went further than what he promised or fell short? If he fell short of what he promised the people before he was elected, how can you honestly complain that he is too far left for the majority when the majority elected him on promises to the left of what he has actually delivered?

Plain Jane

January 14, 2011 at 12:22 pm

Since it is entirely plausible that you don’t know what Obama’s campaign promises were which lost him support from the left.

1. To raise taxes on those making over $250,000. – Not done to please the right.

2. To reform health care with a public option – Not done to please the right.

3. To close Guantanamo – Not done to please the right.

4. To bring troops home from Iraq, temporarily surge troops in Afghanistan to stabilize the country and then bring them home. – Not done to please the military industrial complex – right.

Anonymous

January 14, 2011 at 3:41 pm

Mitch, quit lying. You haven’t investigated squat. If you had you would have seen the deficit by Obama in his first two years dwarfs Pres Bush’s entire 8 year deficit and Obama did not have 9/11 to deal with.

Plain Jane. You are obviously very naive politically. Obama could not do your items 1 and 2 because he didn’t have the votes. He found out that item 3 would cost the lives of Americans and was physically impossible. Item 4 would cost the lives of millions of Iraqis & Afghanis & would doom his presidency to only one term and possible assure Republican presidents for the next 20 years.

Mitch

January 14, 2011 at 3:51 pm

3:41,

Can you think of any reasons why the deficit might have grown at the start of the Obama administration? Anything that might have involved the existing policies?

What actions did Obama take that caused the deficit to grow?

Can you think of any responses to 9/11, in theory, that might have cost less and accomplished more than invading Iraq?

Not A Native

January 14, 2011 at 3:52 pm

I also appreciated Krugman’s op-ed essay. For a slightly different slant from a responsible conservative(it not an oxymoron) perspective on the same topic, I recommend Brooks’ essay, which also points out how no one is truly self-made.

Mitch

January 14, 2011 at 4:03 pm

3:41, 11:56, Night Owl,

I’d still be grateful to hear the specific reasons behind your opinions that Obama is far left, and that he is destroying the country.

The statement that the deficit has grown in the past two years is a good start, although we disagree about where the responsibility for that increase lies. It’s something that can be discussed, and as more information is brought to the table, our opinions can at least become more informed even if it would be too much to hope that we’d come to agreement.

For example, I’d point out two things.

First, that the numbers for the first year of any administration really belong in large part to the previous administration.

Second, that the Obama administration was warned by the vast majority of economists that any pullback on government spending would likely plunge the country into a deep depression. In fact, liberal economists fear that Obama blew it by not forcing enough stimulus spending, and that the economy will suffer as a result. However, given the Republican opposition, other economists feel there was no way Obama could have got more.

But simple accusations: “Bush is a Nazi,” “Obama is Hitler” don’t contribute as much. Don’t you agree?

Plain Jane

January 14, 2011 at 4:04 pm

Duh, 3:41. Now exactly what did Obama do that was to the left of his campaign platform that got him elected?

1 & 2. He didn’t have the votes because of how many congressmen are owned by their campaign contributors, not because the majority of the citizens were opposed.
3. Making a claim that closing a prison would cost lives isn’t the same as proving it. Furthermore, it wasn’t physically impossible, it was politically impossible. Big difference.
4. Same answer as 3.

Mitch

January 14, 2011 at 4:11 pm

Here’s a link to an article discussing support for the stimulus from conservative economists:

Incidentally, I don’t like the stimulus approach either. I feel that the stimulus should have been oriented much more towards helping people at the bottom, and I feel that the banks should not have been bailed out without their profits for at least the next several years being distributed to the public.

But I recognize that the administration is not the only power center in the United States, and I suspect it’s not even among the strongest. Obama is a pragmatic politician who makes the best deal he can with the hand he’s dealt, and the dealer gives a lot of cards to those who own the banks.

Joel Mielke

January 14, 2011 at 5:19 pm

“The Obama administration isn’t far left?”

No Anonymous, he’s not. As my Goldwater Republican attorney cousin told me before the last election, “Obama is the only choice for a traditional conservative.” I don’t see where he’s been proved wrong.

Bolithio

January 14, 2011 at 5:23 pm

And like Stewart pointed out the other night, how would the GOP react if Obama was proposing Bush’s infamous ‘No Child Left Behind’? You think they would rally behind him like they did Bush?

Joel Mielke

January 14, 2011 at 5:29 pm

The GOP does not represent conservatives any more. They’re under the spell of gun nuts and teabaggers.

sfb

January 14, 2011 at 6:17 pm

I am a conservative and Obama is the best President I have seen in almost 50 years. Bush and Co. turned me off so bad that Republican is now a four letter word to me.
I don’t want my leaders thumping the bible or supporting illegals. Let the gays marry and lower my taxes. What party is that?

Walt

January 14, 2011 at 6:36 pm

Mitch and PJ, save your (print) breath: the right hates Obama because he is a Democrat, and, like Clinton,they will ALWAYS hate Obama. From my perspective, like PJ says, he’s moved steadily to the right since being elected, and they still HATE, loathe and despise him as much as ever. The only change is he’s lost his base. . .which is why he will be a one-term president.

Sweatie pie

January 14, 2011 at 7:15 pm

I told you it was the Gay Librials NOT the tea party — it’s the Gays that are violent — with thier Gay Pride retoric………. and by the way … what the hell….. you lefties should just accept this sicko for what he is one of you — where is the acceptance and understanding you preach to the rest of us…. this is what he wanted to do —- so what if he just pushed in your face — isn’t that what you did with your agenda to get accepted………I knew it was a left wing nut job —

SEE HOW YOU SOUND WHEN YOU LEFTIES TRY PINNING THIS ON PALIN __ WHEN YA GONNA LEARN TO STOP JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS — YA SEE WHEN WE TEA BAGGERS AND RIGHT WING NUT JOBS JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS WE GET IT RIGHT —– FT HOOD __ THE GUY WAS MUSILUM __ YOU GUYS JUMP AND GET IT WAY WRONG — how does it feel to know you were wrong again just to find out he’s one of you a COMMY-CROSS DRESSER

Plain Jane

January 14, 2011 at 7:26 pm

Calm down, Sweatie. Getting that worked up will only make you sweat more.

Dr. Joseph Palermo is a good friend, professor, and author; accredited and peer reviewed. In a recent article related to this thread (‘When Violence Comes from the Right, Media Hear No Evil’) he wrote:

“The irony here is stunning: The noise machine of the organized Right in this country — with its Echo Chamber, its 24-hour “news” channel, its think tanks and publishing houses, its talk radio, its money, and its power — thunders deafeningly throughout our political discourse. Yet when one of its members commits an act of violence the whole apparatus suddenly turns to convince us that the only noise it really makes is as quiet as the sound of a bird’s wing cutting the air.”

… the rest of Dr. Palermo’s article describing events leading up to this irony is here:

if sarah palin, glen beck, bill oreilly and rush limbaugh would just post their images on the world wide web with surveyor crosshairs on them i might believe that they really feel that it had nothing to do with an assination attempt. but before they actually do that they should consider that there are a lot of angry democrats out there that believe in the right to bear arms and use them. come on sarah lead the way . glen are you going to let sarah out stage you? rush are you going to hang up on this opportunity? bill? well a weasel is a weasel. rose are you going to jump in ? send me a photo or shut up.

justice for all

January 15, 2011 at 12:34 am

sweetie pie nut baggers would be more accurate

justice for all

January 15, 2011 at 12:45 am

walt i think that his base is comprized of americans who understand his reasoning in the face of the extremism on both sides dont add to the extreme rights momentum to remove him or we’ll end up with snow flake palin and glen fuck trying to run the country

justice for all

January 15, 2011 at 1:24 am

there are a lot of closed minded ,fearful, uneducated,racist,sexist,moralist,extremists here in america than should be according to our constitution and the holy bible or the koran. i would like to thank the tea bagger movement for bringing them all together so that the real america could put ” surveyor” cross hairs on them

justice for all

January 15, 2011 at 1:33 am

if you really feel that surveyor cross hairs on someone doesnt represent a threat send me your photo and your location and i will post it on the web free of charge to prove your point. i think ive made mine.

Plain Jane

January 15, 2011 at 7:38 am

Thanks for the link to Dr. Palermo’s excellent essay, Justice. The people pretending nuts haven’t been worked up to the point of attempted or actual murder by the right wing media and politicians is shown to be delusional by Dr. Palermo. The OK bombing, the murder of Dr. Tiller, the murder of 3 cops in Pittsburgh, the murder of the security guard at the Holocaust Museum in DC, conspiracy to assassinate Obama in Colorado by white supremacists, the murder of Dr. Tiller, the planned attack (thwarted by cops when the would-be killer had car trouble) prove otherwise. Like Representative Giffords and Judge Roll, most of the targets were turned into targets by the right wing media or politicians repeatedly before they were actually targeted by nuts. Those facts are inescapable and no amount of denial or deflection will change them.

As a related note, I should’ve credited Dr. Palermo’s hard earned credentials for others regarding the 11:12 pm post. He knows his American history backwards and forwards– you can catch his on-going, articulately factual column here:

“Mr. Palermo is Associate Professor of American History at CSU, Sacramento. He’s the author of two books on Robert F. Kennedy: In His Own Right (2001) and RFK (2008). Associate Professor, History, CSU, Sacramento. Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Anthropology from UC Santa Cruz, Master’s degree in History from San Jose State University, Master’s degree and Doctorate in American History from Cornell University. Expertise includes political history, presidential politics, presidential war powers, social movements of the 20th century, movements of the 1960s, civil rights, and foreign policy history.”

That was a good read, Jane. With fairness, I doubt Mr. Loughner, likely schizophrenic, actually read nor comprehended ‘Mein Kampf’ or ‘Communist Manifesto’ in their entirety, other than listing them as ‘favorite books’.

I suspect a more clear– or maybe muddled– picture will emerge after the seized contents of his computer and hard drive are reported on.

Nonetheless, the premise of your article is correct: “His mental state may have led him down a particularly destructive path, but his political confusion is by no means unique.”

What’s really scary is this country’s ruling class is readily waiting for it’s own Hitler. We are primed for one such as him to come in and “Restore this land to its former greatness!” It’s already “Amerika ist uber alles!”
Does anyone read William Shirer?

“A man who was wounded in last week’s shooting rampage in Tucson was apprehended by authorities Saturday after he allegedly threatened a “Tea Party” activist at a town hall meeting of victims and eyewitnesses of the attack…

James Eric Fuller, a 63-year-old Democratic activist, was arrested after shouting “You’re dead!” at Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries… Fuller was shot in the knee and back Jan. 8 when a gunman opened fire, killing six and injuring 13, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Fuller, a disabled veteran and former campaign volunteer for Giffords, was charged with making threats, intimidation and disorderly conduct and was involuntarily committed for a psychiatric evaluation.

In an interview with Democracy Now on Thursday, Fuller linked the shooting to conservative leaders associated with the tea party, including Sarah Palin, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck and Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle. “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Fuller said…”

Rich’s piece is so good I’ll put a few paragraphs here, for those who might read it but can’t be bothered to click:

As the president said in Tucson, we lack not just civil discourse, but honest discourse. Much of last week’s televised bloviation was dishonest, dedicated to the pious, feel-good sentiment that both sides are equally culpable for the rage of the past two years. To construct this false equivalency, every left-leaning Web site and Democratic politician’s record was dutifully culled for incendiary invective. If that’s the standard, then both sides are equally at fault — rhetoric can indeed be as violent on the left as on the right.

But that sidesteps the issue. This isn’t about angry blog posts or verbal fisticuffs. Since Obama’s ascension, we’ve seen repeated incidents of political violence. Just a short list would include the 2009 killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a neo-Nazi Obama-hater; last year’s murder-suicide kamikaze attack on an I.R.S. office in Austin, Tex.; and the California police shootout with an assailant plotting to attack an obscure liberal foundation obsessively vilified by Beck.

Obama said, correctly, on Wednesday that “a simple lack of civility” didn’t cause the Tucson tragedy. It didn’t cause these other incidents either. What did inform the earlier violence — including the vandalism at Giffords’s office — was an antigovernment radicalism as rabid on the right now as it was on the left in the late 1960s. That Loughner was likely insane, with no coherent ideological agenda, does not mean that a climate of antigovernment hysteria has no effect on him or other crazed loners out there. Nor does Loughner’s insanity mitigate the surge in unhinged political zealots acting out over the last two years. That’s why so many — on both the finger-pointing left and the hyper-defensive right — automatically assumed he must be another of them.

Anonymous

January 16, 2011 at 11:37 am

Goldie, thank you for sharing your son’s story with us and for telling us about his focus on recovery and his rejection of hatred. You wrote “I deeply appreciate every post that is an attempt to simply share thoughts and concerns rather than to tear down the spirit of another.” I share your perspective on how we ought to treat each other here on the Herald and I appreciate your efforts to heal wounds rather than inflict them when we communicate with one another in any forum.

Anonymous

January 16, 2011 at 12:10 pm

Dan White was not acquitted. He was found guilty of manslaughter. His lawyers had argued that he snapped and shot Moscone and Milk because he was under great emotional strain caused by the pressures of city politics, made worse by poor nutrition and other factors. The press used that as the basis to call White’s defense the “Twinkie Defense.”

After conviction, Dan White spent about four years in prison. Several years after his release from prison, he committed suicide by running his car in a closed garage.

skippy

January 16, 2011 at 1:11 pm

I’m glad this subject was aired and given the light of day.

skippy

January 16, 2011 at 1:15 pm

“The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives — to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”

owltotem

January 16, 2011 at 2:37 pm

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.
— Andre Gide

Poor Anon doesn’t know the difference between an anarchist and a liberal. “I think he feels the people should be able to govern themselves,” said Ms. Figueroa, his former girlfriend. “We didn’t need a higher authority.” His views were a mess (just like his mind) from anti-abortion to legalization of drugs. Trying to put a political label on a schizophrenic is futile.

skippy

January 17, 2011 at 7:14 am

Anon @6:35, I read your link of the NY Times. It was the usual fascinating read from one of the last great newspapers in this nation.

However, I didn’t arrive at the same conclusion you did; in fact, far from it. In contrast, Plain Jane nailed the premise, body, and conclusion of the article well in her comment. Thanks for the link and good read, though.

Anon

January 17, 2011 at 7:19 am

It is too bad. From this thread forward, everything….everything, the Herald posts as commentary articles will be viewed through the lens of this thread.

The Herald’s comments in the article “Reap what you have sown, inflammatory swine.”, and “Congratulations, Tea Party. May you never forget this day.” have now been confirmed by the NEW YORK TIMES no less to be false. Utterly false.

If the Herald is jumping the snake into pure conjecture going forward it is their right. My personal belief is that it is a loss to the community. We have many pure dead ender blogs in the area on both sides.

The Herald, up to this point, was able to navigate allowing the anon postings to serve as the major source of commentary with their articles themselves pretty much down the line presenting both sides. Journalism.

It isn’t too late, but a stand alone article from the Herald outlining an apology is in order. You can hate Sarah Palin all you want, but by making up stories to justify that hate pretty much ruins the journalistic rep of this publication.

What can we believe that is posted here?

Plain Jane

January 17, 2011 at 7:42 am

From the NY Times article which Anon claims said, “Shooter was a Bush Hating druggie,” which of course didn’t say that AT ALL:

“He became an echo chamber for stray ideas, amplifying, for example, certain grandiose tenets of a number of extremist right-wing groups — including the need for a new money system and the government’s mind-manipulation of the masses through language.”

From his friend:

“Around this time, Mr. Loughner bumped into his old girlfriend, Ms. Figueroa, in a store. Years earlier, she had fallen for a shy boy in her computer class; they would hold hands during football games and hang out after marching band practice. Now here he was, his long locks shorn and an off-kilter air. A completely different person, it seemed.

“It was kind of like he wasn’t there,” Ms. Figueroa recalled. “I can’t put my finger on it. It just wasn’t a good feeling. I kind of got a chill.”

From his school:
“Mr. Loughner said that he had paid for his courses illegally because, “I did not pay with gold and silver” — a standard position among right-wing extremist groups.”

From his bank:
It was not just his appearance — the pale shaved head and eyebrows — that unnerved them. It was also the aggressive, often sexist things that he said, including asserting that women should not be allowed to hold positions of power or authority.

One individual with knowledge of the situation said Mr. Loughner once got into a dispute with a female branch employee after she told him that a request of his would violate bank policy. He brusquely challenged the woman, telling her that she should not have any power.”

Yep, the NY Time article Anon posted definitively proves this nut was a leftist. pfft!

humboldturtle

January 17, 2011 at 7:47 am

Anon, what can we believe? At all?

robash141

January 17, 2011 at 7:52 am

@ 7:19 and the right -wing anonymity’s heretofore had such great respect for Heraldo’s journalistic integrity. Sad,sad,sad…

robash141

January 17, 2011 at 8:27 am

Really now, we shouldn’t worry about all those people who Sarah Glen and Rush incited to get shot in the head . We should instead focus on the real victim here and that’s Heraldo’s reputation for journalistic integrity amongst the right wing anons.

walt

January 17, 2011 at 9:14 am

Maybe he he/she/they changed the name to “Beck’s Barks.” hTat has the ring of TRUTH.

Anonymous

January 17, 2011 at 9:35 am

Anon, integrity means nothing to Heraldo. Or to Plain Jane, Robash141 and their ilk.

humboldturtle

January 17, 2011 at 9:46 am

Dontcha just love the word ILK?!

humboldturtilk

January 17, 2011 at 9:46 am

I am my ilk.

Plain Jane

January 17, 2011 at 9:57 am

9:35, General accusations of lack of integrity are nothing but smears when not supported by specific incidents. Since the one you seem to be referencing today clearly demonstrates Anon’s lack of integrity (or reading comprehension) in his gross misrepresentation of the NY Times article he posted today. Either you didn’t read it before commenting or you failed to understand it as well. Either way, it doesn’t make you look good.

E. Percival Ne'er-do-well Esquire III

January 17, 2011 at 10:16 am

In case you haven’t been able to figure this out yet Anon 7:19, this is a democratic, leftist, progressive, socialist, and according to you and your ilk “communist and fascist” blog. So if you read something on here and you mistakenly think your stupid ass is on “michellemalkin.com”, because nobody seems to be agreeing with you, don’t ask for an apology from the blogger or commenters, just click on that little X in the top right hand corner of your screen and select another blog where your well thought out arguments and informative postings will be more appreciated.

Anonymous

January 17, 2011 at 12:04 pm

Thinking, rational people agree with him. There are a few of us here.

Aren’t you & plain jane in favor of free speech percival or does that only apply to leftists ?

Mitch

January 17, 2011 at 12:17 pm

12:04,

I think you’re very welcome here. Do you think the cited NY Times article shows Loughner to be a leftist, 12:04? It’s a real question.

Plain Jane

January 17, 2011 at 12:50 pm

12:04, Percival didn’t say anything about your or his rights to express your opinions and neither have I. Opinions beget other opinions. Saying that you can leave if you are so offended by the posts here that you demand an apology, not that you should or must leave.

What exactly did you read (copy / paste please – no paraphrasing) that led you to agree with Anon on what the NY Times article said, 12:04?

Anonymous

January 17, 2011 at 2:54 pm

The laughable attempts to pin Loughner’s actions on right wing radio & Sarah Palin are nothing more than attempts to silence talk radio. That is the attack on free speech he was talking about. At least be honest enough to admit that.

And in today’s New York Times, it is being reported that Loughner hated Pres Bush with a passion. Yesterday on NBC news it reported he also ranted about the “illegal wars” in Iraq & Afghanistan. Do you see how stupid you all are in your pathetic arguments ?

It doesn’t matter what his politics are. He’s insane! A lot of us are just trying to say that with so many people desperate, broke and disillusioned; it’s not a good idea to suggest violence as a means of personal empowerment.

Plain Jane

January 17, 2011 at 6:19 pm

The guy had lots of views on different issues ranging from anarchist to fascist, some left, some right. He was a SCHIZOPHRENIC. Repeating that the NY Times said he hated Bush so presto chango he’s a leftist. Even non-crazy people aren’t that simple. Most people have some conservative and some liberal views on different issues. There are many on the right who despised Bush for being too liberal fiscally. Does that make them liberals? I guess when you have a mentality that demands 100% pure teaparty conservatism, it’s hard to understand. The issue at THIS time is to tone down the vitriol. If Palin and Beck can’t keep their audiences without hysterical and violent rhetoric, they don’t deserve them.

Obama has called for less vitriol, Olbermann has apologized for his contributions and, to his credit, Ailes has told his people to tone it down. Whether that will include their radio shows or guest appearances – who knows. Time will tell.

Plain Jane

January 17, 2011 at 6:27 pm

As an added note, I don’t understand how such a raving lunatic as Beck, so uninformed regarding history and pretty much everything else, so eager to give credence to the craziest claims, the wildest exaggerations and distortions, could have any sane viewers. He’s like the TV version of Prison Planet. When you consider his ratings, that’s pretty scary.

mresquan

January 17, 2011 at 6:44 pm

“He’s like the TV version of Prison Planet.”

Alex Jones is extremely critical of Beck actually.

Plain Jane

January 17, 2011 at 6:59 pm

Well, they are competitors for the gold bug ads, but a cursory skim of the Prison Planet articles on Beck shows that most are complaining or crowing about him reporting on stories they did first, accusing him of being a false prophet, leading the people astray for the elite. Beck is too moderate for Jones.

mresquan

January 17, 2011 at 8:08 pm

I see where you are coming from for the most part,although I don’t totally agree that Beck is too moderate for Jones though,realizing that Beck extolled Bush and everything that occurred under his watch.
Personally,I don’t see where bringing back a gold standard is an extremist view as I think it’s a bad idea to have only one form of currency.

Does it sound to anyone else that PJ is beginning to backpeddle? And, tip-o-the-hat to you, Percy 3, very well put. The Herald should be left to all like-minded individuals so that they may rant and preach to one another in peace without fear of being distracted by those with other ideas.
But the draw is too mighty and the will too weak to look away from the snake pit.

Henry D

January 17, 2011 at 11:36 pm

Sorry, backpedal.

Anonymous

January 18, 2011 at 12:40 am

I, for one, am glad PJ is backing away from disrespectful comments to other commenters. Including, I trust, those famous initials of hers. Seriously, PJ, it will be a welcome improvement. I write that as someone who agrees with much of what you write.

That’s one issue no one’s talking about in this debate: why hate and violence sell so well. Really, Palin, Beck and Rush are just pandering to the audience. The audience is the problem. Like drugs, if you deal with the underlying problem, the demand, the problem will go away.

Plain Jane

January 18, 2011 at 6:38 am

Backpedal on what, Henry? I have repeatedly attempted to get the same points across. When you don’t read the threads in their entirety, is it fair or honest to pretend you know what someone’s positions have been? Taking one sentence (or even a couple of words) out of a 4 page newspaper article and claiming that is what it said while ignoring multiple other sentences which are contradictory is why you people are so confused all the time Context is very important but gets lost in the right spin cycle.

Walt gets it. These people will find someone to scare the crap out of them and get them angry, but it must be fantasy. Real scary stuff like global warming and permanently high unemployment must be denied while anger and fear is created and directed at those who offend the Wannabee Masters of the Universe by suggesting there need to be changes for a sustainable future. These are scary times for lots of people, uncertain if they will ever find another job, if their kids will get a decent education, or even how they will keep a roof over their heads. Diverting the masses’ attention to scapegoating others always seems to work, but it never solves the problems. The “WMofU’s” vision for the future is most likely very different than yours or mine.

High Finance

January 18, 2011 at 9:53 am

Yes, PJ is definitely starting to backpeddle on the crazy Loughner and the reason he started shooting.

The point IS that he is crazy. It wasn’t Sarah Palin, Glen Beck or Rush that caused him to start shooting. Almost verybody is admitting that now. But that is not how the debate started.

Within hours of the shooting, Heraldo, PJ, Mathews and the rest of the extreme left jumped to the charge that it was the right’s rhetoric that caused this. Now most realize (except for Heraldo & a tiny handful of other bitter partisans) that they sound crazier than Beck himself for having made that charge.

The left has been slobbering for years at the idea of shutting down talk radio because it is dominated by conservatives. The “Fairness Doctrine” was seriously being considered by the Democrat dominated Congress, especially after the liberals failed miserably at talk radio. This was a chance to push that cause forward again.

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 18, 2011 at 9:59 am

Backpeddlers usually are caught because they write so much stuff and get lost in their own brainwashed teachings. Then the whole “can’t lose the argument” mentality. Glad others noticed the backpeddling as well!

JL

"HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE"

January 18, 2011 at 10:08 am

currency = that which is taxable more so than bartering or exchanging goods and services for other goods and services.

Currency is a ploy to attach taxations to people’s eraned incomes that are exchanged for needs like goods and services to survive in today’s reality, just like yesteryears reality.

Currency really is not necessary for humans to survive; yet, currency is necessary for humans to divide and conquer and create MEGA wealth for the few while appealing to government’s deceptive and manipulative protocols based on agendized politics.

JL

Plain Jane

January 18, 2011 at 10:34 am

Backpedaling assumes one has changed either their opinion or their statements. I have never blamed any one particular person for the climate of hate or said that it only affects those on the right, just the opposite. I have stated and still maintain that ALL of the truly violent rhetoric has come from the right and that affects EVERYONE, regardless of their ideology. If a right wing inflammatory statement causes a rightist to go postal against liberals, the inflammatory statement is just as culpable as if a leftist goes postal on conservatives. The reverse is also true. Stating that it’s good that people on all sides have agreed that the rhetoric needs to be toned down merely restates, in a different way, that they have admitted the rhetoric is over-the-top and that isn’t healthy for our country. Even Palin has asked for a more civil tone. I don’t expect the likes of HiFi or that gibberish ranter to get it, but most people can.

Anonymous

January 18, 2011 at 10:35 am

Currency is a much more efficent means of exchange than barter. Isn’t that obvious? (I wouldn’t have to write such an obvious thing here, except that I broke my own rule and read one of JL’s comments.)

Plain Jane

January 18, 2011 at 10:37 am

Furthermore, Palin’s charge that the accusations against her have incited violent threats against her and her family proves she knows it can and does incite violence. If you disagree, take it up with Palin.

Plain Jane

January 18, 2011 at 10:44 am

To short circuit the claims that Palin didn’t claim accusations can incite violence:

From Palin’s “blood libel” speech:

“But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That, is reprehensible.”

and further proof

“Palin aide Rebecca Mansour said the former Alaska governor stands by her video.

“There has been an incredible increase in death threats against Gov. Palin since the tragedy in Arizona, since she’s been accused of having the blood of those victims on her hands,” Mansour said. “When you start to accuse people of having the blood of innocent people on their hands, it incites violence.”

Plain Jane

January 18, 2011 at 11:16 am

Ignoring hypocrisy doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, even if they don’t report it on Fox.

Annonymous

January 18, 2011 at 12:00 pm

That is what we love about Janey. We could pick 100 topics and everybody knows precisely what stand she will take on every single flippin’ one of them ahead of time. Facts don’t matter. Information is irrelevant. Just pick the anti establishment side and their Jane is. Somehow she will be the victim in every issue. Panting and hyperventilating all kinds of conspiracy rants.

Plain Jane

January 18, 2011 at 12:14 pm

And yet not a word about Palin claiming rhetoric directed at her can incite violence while her rhetoric against others can’t.

Personal attacks aren’t facts, 12:00, and since you can’t be identified among the multitude of anonymi, the totality of your posted opinions can’t be analysed. Refute the facts if you can. I’m not holding my breath.

Plain Jane

January 18, 2011 at 12:15 pm

People who use the word “we” when they mean “I” have obvious mental problems as well.

tra

January 18, 2011 at 12:16 pm

“When you start to accuse people of having the blood of innocent people on their hands, it incites violence.”

Hmmmm…would that include Palin’s accusations that Obama and the Dems were trying to create “death panels.”

Plain Jane

January 18, 2011 at 12:36 pm

People who can’t comprehend a newspaper article and repeatedly misinterpret simple statements aren’t likely to get it, Tra. That’s why they just memorize the talking points from the right wing echo chamber, why their pundits have to repeat the same echoes over and over via various mouthpieces, TV, radio, print and internet. That is also why they can’t ever logically refute anything, but just keep spewing the same illogic and completely ignore the facts. These are not very bright people.

Annonymous

January 18, 2011 at 2:41 pm

Pot, kettle, black dearie.

Queso Pendejo

January 18, 2011 at 3:41 pm

PJ,
Who are “they” and “you people”?

Anonymous

January 18, 2011 at 3:47 pm

Plain Jane has the audacity to judge the mental fitness of other people!?!?

1. “They” are “People who can’t comprehend a newspaper article and repeatedly misinterpret simple statements,” there have been a number of examples in this thread alone, particularly the Anonymous who posted and misinterpreted the NY Times article and those who claimed they read it and agreed with him. Not one of them has responded to several posters’ challenges that they detail exactly what made them come to the conclusion they reached. Further, no one has explained Palin’s apparent contradictions of whether or not rhetoric can incite violence.

2. No where in the post did I use “you people,” since my post was clearly addressed to Tra and he isn’t one of the “people” I was referring to.

I rest my case.

robash141

January 18, 2011 at 4:32 pm

Man, these right wingers act as if not being allowed to threaten random with people with guns is soooooooooo much of a huge imposition upon their personal freedom.
They obviously feel entitled to try and go around and attempt to bully and intimidate whoever they choose or whoever gets in their way. Hence the obsession with gun play and threats of violence.

It’s such a total childish schoolyard bully mentality. When someone stands up to them ,the righties start immediately whining about how they are being treated unfairly.

Anon

January 18, 2011 at 5:28 pm

Well what can you expect.

On this, the second anniversary of Obams’s “pledge” and promise to close GITMO within a year…..two wars bigger and better than ever, a wall street bailout and now a sharp move to the center…..the poor libs here just don’t have anything but Sarah anymore.

If we take her away from them they won’t have anything left.

After looking at this thread and seeing one poster carrying a third or more of the posts, you have to wonder if there isn’t something to the “crazy” aspect of some out there.

“These are scary times for lots of people, uncertain if they will ever find another job, if their kids will get a decent education, or even how they will keep a roof over their heads. Diverting the masses’ attention to scapegoating others always seems to work, but it never solves the problems.”

I think we can agree with that one. A universal truth that we should keep in mind while we beat down one another to express our opinions. Thanks Plain Jane.

Anonymous

January 20, 2011 at 11:35 am

Yes it was a gem and I wish that Plain Jane would quit scapegoating others all the time.

Plain Jane

January 20, 2011 at 11:38 am

And STILL no response to the repeated questions, just personal insults. I am so not surprised.